
Class 
Book. 






u 



GopyiightN°_ 






COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




Doubleday, Pajje and Co., New York. AD. i9oo 













Copyright, 1900, by 

Grace Gallatin Seton-Cnompaon 



65644 



ll_ibw y o* Cotipraae 
}'' Vtu tOWt KtCtswtO 

t OCT 24 1900 

j Copyright entry 

SECOND COPY. 

Delivered to 

GRGtrf DIVISION, 

JAOV— 1 o 1900 - 



w 

I 

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A 








In this Book the full-page Drawings 
were made by Ernest Seton-Thomp- 
son, G. Wright and E. M. Ashe, and the 
Marginals by S. N. Abbott. The cover, 
title-page and general make-up were de- 
signed by the Author. Thanks are due 
to Miller Christy for proof revision, and 
to A. A. Anderson for valuable sugges- 
tions on camp outfitting. 



XJ 




THIS BOOK IS A TRIBUTE TO 
THE WEST. 

I have used many Western phrase 

necessary to the Western setting. 

I can only add that the events related 
really happened in the Rocky Moun- 
tains of the United States and Canada : 
and this is why, being a woman. I wanted 
to tell about them, in the hope that some 
going-to-Europe-in-the-summer-woman 
may be tempted to go West instead. 

G. G. S.-T. 
New York City, S epte mber ist, 19c:. 



1:-^ 




CONTENTS 








PAGE 


F 

8 


I 


The Why of It . 


13 


T 


II 


Outfit and Advice tor the 
Woman-who-goes-hunting- 








with-her-husband . 


l 7 




III 


The First Plunge of the 








Woman Tenderfoot . 


59 




IV 


Which Treats of the Imps 








and My Elk . 


73 




V 


Lost in the Mountains 


97 




VI 


The Cook 


"3 




VII 


Among the Clouds 


129 




VIII 


At Yeddars 


143 




IX 


My Antelope 


161 





A 








N 
D 
E 
R 

p 




CONTENTS 




r 
O 

o 






PAGE 


T 


X 


A Mountain Drama 


*75 




XI 


What I Know about Wahb 








of the Bighorn Basin 


183 




XII 


The Dead Hunt 


215 




XIII 


Just Rattlesnakes 


2 45 




XIV 


As Cowgirl 


265 




XV 


The Sweet Pea Lady . 
Some one Else's Mountain 








Sheep .... 


291 




XVI 


In which the Tenderfoot 








Learns a New Trick 


3*3 


I 


XVII 


Our Mine 


335 




XVII 


i The Last Word . 


355 




A LIST OF 
FULL-PAGE DRAWINGS. 



Costume for cross saddle riding . 25 

Tears starting from your smoke-in- 
flamed eyes .... 41 

Saddle cover for wet weather 
Policeman's equestrian rain coat 51 

She was postmistress twice a week 77 

The trail was lost in a gully . .104 

Whetted one to a razor edge and 
threw it into a tree where it stuck 
quivering . . .121 

Not three hundred yards away . . . 
were two bull elk in deadly combat 139 






6 



R 

F 

PAGE § 
T 



o 

D A LIST OF 

I FULL-PAGE DRAWINGS. 

F 

8 PAGE 

Down the path came two of the 
prettiest Blacktails . . -151 

A misstep would have sent us fly- 
ing over the cliff . . . 166 

Thus I fought through the afternoon 197 

We whizzed across the railroad 
track in front of the Day Express 222 

Five feet full in front of us, they 
pulled their horses to a dead stop 239 

The coyotes made savage music . 253 

The horrid thing was ready for me 260 




A LIST OF 
FULL-PAGE DRAWINGS. 

PAGE 

I started on a gallop, swinging one 
arm ...... 281 

The warm beating heart of a 
mountain sheep . . . 304 

I could not keep away from his hoofs 309 

We started forward, just as the rear 
wheels were hovering over the edge 327 

" You better not sit down on that 
kaig . . . It's nitroglycerine " . 345 

The tunnel caused its roof to cave 
in close behind me . . 349 

A mountain lion sneaked past my 
saddle-pillowed head . . . 359 



top 

I 

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8 

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i. 

THE WHY OF IT. 
23) 




I. 




HEORETICALLY, I 

have always agreed with 
the Quaker wife who re- 
formed her husband — 
"Whither thou goest, 
I go also, Dicky dear." 
What thou doest, I do also, Dicky 
dear." So when, the year after our 
marriage, Nimrod announced that the 
mountain madness was again working 
in his blood, and that he must go West 
and take up the trail for his holiday, I 
tucked my summer-watering-place-and- 
Europe-flying-trip mind away (not with- 




c^^ 




out regret, I confess) and cautiously 
tried to acquire a new vocabulary and 
some new ideas. 

Of course, plenty of women have 
handled guns and have gone to the 
Rocky Mountains on hunting trips — 
but they were not among my friends. 
However, my imagination was good, 
and the outfit I got together for my 
first trip appalled that good man, my 
husband, while the number of things I 
had to learn appalled me. 

In fact, the first four months spent 
'Out West' were taken up in learning 
how to ride, how to dress for it, how to 
shoot, and how to philosophise, each of 
which lessons is a story in itself. But 
briefly, in order to come to this story, 
I must have a side talk with the 
Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-hus- 
band. Those not interested please omit 
the next chapter. 




mi 



ii. 

OUTFIT AND ADVICE 

FOR THE WOMAN-WHO- 

GOES-HUNTING-WITH- 

HER-HUSBAND. 




II. 



i 



S it really so that most 
women say no to camp 
life because they are 
afraid of being uncom- 
fortable and looking 
unbeautiful? There is 
no reason why a woman should make 
a freak of herself even if she is going to 
rough it ; as a matter of fact I do not 
rough it, I go for enjoyment and leave 
out all possible discomforts. There is 
no reason why a woman should be more 
uncomfortable out in the mountains, 
with the wild west wind for companion 




,/>•• 




and the big blue sky for a roof, than sit- 
ting in a 10 by 12 whitewashed bedroom 
of the summer hotel variety, with the 
tin roof to keep out what air might be 
passing. A possible mosquito or gnat 
in the mountains is no more irritating 
than the objectionable personality that 
is sure to be forced upon you every 
hour at the summer hotel. The usual 
walk, the usual drive, the usual hop, 
the usual novel, the usual scandal, — 
in a word, the continual consciousness 
of self as related to dress, to manners, 
to position, which the gregarious living 
of a hotel enforces — are all right enough 
once in a while; but do you not get 
enough of such life in the winter to last 
for all the year ? 

Is one never to forget that it is not 
proper to wear gold beads with crape ? 
Understand, I am not to be set down 





as having any charity for the ignoramus 
who would wear that combination, but 
I wish to record the fact that there are 
times, under the spell of the West, when 
I simply do not care whether there are 
such things as gold beads and crape ; 
when the whole business of city life, the 
music, arts, drama, the pleasant friends, 
equally with the platitudes of things and 
people you care not about — civiliza- 
tion, in a word — when all these fade 
away from my thoughts as far as geo- 
graphically they are, and in their place 
comes the joy of being at least a healthy, 
if not an intelligent, animal. It is a plea- 
sure to eat when the time comes around, 
a good old-fashioned pleasure, and you 
need no dainty serving to tempt you. It 
is another pleasure to use your muscles, 
to buffet with the elements, to endure 
long hours of riding, to run where walk- 




ing would do, to jump an obstacle in- ^ 
stead of going around it, to return, m ft 
physically at least, .to your pinafore days n 
when you played with your brother J 
Willie. Red blood means a rose-colored Q 
world. Did you feel like that last sum- j? 
mer at Newport or Narragansett ? <j> 

So enough ; come with me and learn 
how to be vulgarly robust. 

Of course one must have clothes and 
personal comforts, so, while we are still 
in the city humor, let us order a habit 
suitable for riding astride. Whipcord, 
or a closely woven homespun, in some 
shade of grayish brown that harmonizes 
with the landscape, is best. Corduroy 
is pretty, if you like it, but rather clumsy. 
Denham will do, but it wrinkles and 
becomes untidy. Indeed it has been 
my experience that it is economy to 
buy the best quality of cloth you can 



afford, for then the garment always 
keeps its shape, even after hard wear, 
and can be cleaned and made ready 
for another year, and another, and an- 
other. You will need it, never fear. 
Once you have opened your ears, " the 
Red Gods " will not cease to " call for 
you." 

In Western life you are on and off 
your horse at the change of a thought. 
Your horse is not an animate exercise- 
maker that John brings around for a 
couple of hours each morning; he is 
your companion, and shares the vicissi- 
tudes of your life. You even consult 
him on occasion, especially on matters 
relating to the road. Therefore your 
costume must look equally well on and 
off the horse. In meeting this require- 
ment, my woes were many. I struggled 
valiantly with everything in the market, 




and finally, from five varieties of di- 
vided skirts and bloomers, the follow- 
ing practical and becoming habit was 
evolved. 

I speak thus modestly, as there is now 
a trail of patterns of this habit from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Wher- 
ever it goes, it makes converts, especial- 
ly among the wives of army officers at 
the various Western posts where we 
have been — for the majority of women 
in the West, and I nearly said all the 
sensible ones, now ride astride. 

When off the horse, there is nothing 
about this habit to distinguish it from 
any trim golf suit, with the stitching 
up the left front which is now so popu- 
lar. When on the horse, it looks, as 
some one phrased it, as though one were 
riding side saddle on both sides. This 
is accomplished by having the fronts of 






COSTUME FOR CKOSS SADDLE RIDING. 
Designed by the Author. 



A 



the skirt double, free nearly to the waist, 
and, when off the horse, fastened by pat- 
ent hooks. The back seam is also open, 
faced for several inches, stitched and 
closed by patent fasteners. Snug 
bloomers of the same material are worn 
underneath. The simplicity of this 
habit is its chief charm ; there is no 
superfluous material to sit upon — oh, 
the torture of wrinkled cloth in the 
divided skirt! — and it does not fly up 
even in a strong wind, if one knows 
how to ride. The skirt is four inches 
from the ground — it should not bell 
much on the sides — and about three and 
a half yards at the bottom, which is 
finished with a five-inch stitched hem. 

Any style of jacket is of course suita- 
ble. One that looks well on the horse 
is tight fitting, with postilion back, short 
on hips, sharp pointed in front, with 



single-breasted vest of reddish leather 
(the habit material of brown whipcord), 
fastened by brass buttons, leather collar 
and revers, and a narrow leather band on 
the close-fitting sleeves. A touch of 
leather on the skirt in the form of a 
patch pocket is harmonious, but any 
extensive leather trimming on the skirt 
makes it unnecessarily heavy. 

A suit of this kind should be as irre- 
proachable in fit and finish as a tailor 
can make it. This is true economy, for 
when you return in the autumn it is 
ready for use as a rainy-day costume. 

Once you have your habit, the next 
purchase should be stout, heavy soled 
boots, 13 or 14 inches high, which 
will protect the leg in walking and 
from the stirrup leather while riding. 
One needs two felt hats (never straw), 
one of good quality for sun or rain, 



with large firm brim. This is impor- 
tant, for if the brim be not firm the 
elements will soon reduce it to raglike 
limpness and it will flap up and down 
in your face as you ride. This can be 
borne with composure for five or ten 
minutes, but not for days and weeks at 
a time. The other felt hat may be as 
small and as cheap as you like. Only 
see that it combines the graces of com- 
fort and becomingness. It is for even- 
ings, and sunless rainless days. A small 
brown felt, with a narrow leather band, 
gilt buckle, and a twist of orange veil- 
ing around the crown, is pretty for the 
whipcord costume. 

One can do a wonderful amount of 
smartening up with tulle, hat pins, belts, 
and fancy neck ribbons, all of which 
comparatively take up no room and add 
no weight, always the first consideration. 




Be sure you supply yourself with a re- 
serve of hat pins. Two devices by 
which they may be made to stay in the 
hat are here shown. The spiral can be 
given to any hat pin. The chain and 
small brooch should be used if the hat 
pin is of much value. 

At this point, if any man, a reviewer 
perhaps, has delved thus far into the 
mysteries of feminine outfit, he will 
probably remark, " Why take a hat pin 
of much value?" to which I reply, 
" Why not ? Can you suggest any 
more harmless or useful vent for woman's 
desire to ornament herself? And un- 
less you want her to be that horror of 
horrors, a strong-minded woman, do you 
think you can strip her for three months 
of all her gewgaws and still have her 
filled with the proper desire to be pleas- 
ing in your eyes ? No ; better let her 



M J 
A/ 
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fi 




have the hat pins — and you know they 
really are useful — and then she will dress 
up to those hat pins, if it is only with a 
fresh neck ribbon and a daisy at her belt." 
I had a man's saddle, with a narrow 
tree and high pommel and cantle, such 
as is used out West, and as I had not 
ridden a horse since the hazy days of my 
infancy, I got on the huge creature's back 
with everything to learn. Fear envel- 
oped me as in a cloud during my first 
ride, and the possibilities of the little 
cow pony they put me on seemed more 
awe-inspiring than those of a locomo- 
tive. But I had been reading Professor 
William James and acquired from him 
the idea (I hope I do not malign him) 
that the accomplishment of a thing de- 
pends largely upon one's mental attitude, 
and this was mine all nicely taken — in 
New York : — 



"This thing has been done before, and 
done well. Good; then I can do it, and 
in joy it too." 

I particularly insisted upon the latter 
clause — in the East. This formula is 
applicable in any situation. I never 
should have gotten through my West- 
ern experiences without it, and I ad- 
vise you, my dear Woman-who-goes- 
hunting-with-her-husband, to take a 
large stock of it made up and ready for 
use. There is one other rule for your 
conduct, if you want to be a success: 
think what you like, but unless it is 
pleasant, don't say it. 

Is it better to ride astride % I will 
not carry the battle ground into the 
East, although even here I have my 
opinion; but in the West, in the moun- 
tains, there can be no question that it is 
the only "way. Here is an example to 




33 



' w illustrate : Two New York women, 
m mother and daughter, took a trip ol 
N x some three hundred miles over the 
|» pathless Wind River Mountains. The 
^ mother rode astride, but the daughter 
f preferred to exhibit her Durland Acad- 
; o emy accomplishment, and rode side- 
saddle, according to the fashion set by 
an artful queen to hide her deformity. 
The advantages of health, youth and 
strength were all with the daughter; 
yet in every case on that long march it 
was the daughter who gave out first 
and compelled the pack train to halt 
while she and her horse rested. And 
the daughter was obliged to change 
from one horse to another, while the 
same horse was able to carry the mother, 
a slightly heavier woman, through the 
trip. And the back of the horse which 
the daughter had ridden chiefly was in 



such a condition from saddle galls that 
the animal, two months before a mag- 
nificent creature, had to be shot. 

I hear you say, "But that was an 
extreme case." Perhaps it was, but it 
supports the verdict of the old moun- 
taineers who refuse to let any horse they 
prize be saddled with "those gol-darned 
woman fripperies." 

There is also another side. A woman 
at best is physically handicapped when 
roughing it with husband or brother. 
Then why increase that handicap by 
wearing trailing skirts that catch on 
every log and bramble, and which de- 
mand the services of at least one hand to 
hold up (fortunately this battle is already 
won), and by choosing to ride side-sad- 
dle, thus making it twice as difficult 
to mount and dismount by yourself, 
which in fact compels you to seek the 




u. 



assistance of a log, or stone, or a friendly 
hand for a lift? Western riding is not 
Central Park riding, nor is it Rotten 
Row riding. The cowboy's, or military, 
seat is much simpler and easier for both 
man and beast than the Park seat — 
though, of course, less stylish. That is 
the glory of it; you can go galloping 
over the prairie and uplands with never a 
thought that the trot is more proper, and 
your course, untrammelled by fenced-in 
roads, is straight to the setting sun or 
to yonder butte. And if you want a 
spice of danger, it is there, sometimes 
more than you want, in the presence oi 
badger and gopher holes, to step into 
which while at high speed may mean 
a broken leg for your horse, perhaps a 
broken neck for yourself. But to return 
to the independence of riding astride : 
One day I was following a game trail 



along a very steep bank which ended 
a hundred feet below in a granite 
precipice. It had been raining and 
snowing in a fitful fashion, and the clay 
ground was slippery, making a most 
treacherous footing. One of the pack 
animals just ahead of my horse slipped, 
fell to his knees, the heavy pack over- 
balanced him, and away he rolled over 
and over down the slope, to be stopped 
from the precipice only by the happy 
accident of a scrub tree in the way. 
Frightened by this sight, my animal 
plunged, and he, too, lost his footing. 
Had I been riding side-saddle, nothing 
could have saved me, for the down- 
hill was on the near side; but instead 
I swung out of the saddle on the off 
side and landed in a heap on the up- 
hill, still clutching the bridle. That 
act saved my horse's life, probably, 





as well as my own. For the sudden 
weight I put on the upper side as I swung 
off enabled him to recover his balance 
just in time. I do not pretend to say 
that I can dismount from the off side 
as easily as from the near, because I am 
not accustomed to it. But I have fre- 
quently done it in emergencies, while a 
side-saddle leaves one helpless in this 
case as in many others. 

Besides being unable to mount and 
dismount without assistance it is very 
difficult to get side-saddle broken horses, 
and it usually means a horse so broken 
in health and spirits that he does not 
care what is being strapped on his back 
and dangling on one side of him only. 
And to be on such an animal means 
that you are on the worst mount of the 
outfit, and I am sure that it requires 
little imagination on any one's part to 




know therein lies misery. Oh ! the 
weariness of being the weakest of the 
party and the worst mounted — to be 
always at the tail end of the line, never 
to be able to keep up with the saddle 
horses when they start off for a canter, 
to expend your stock of vitality, which 
you should husband for larger matters, 
in urging your beast by voice and quirt 
to further exertion ! Never place your- 
self in such a position. The former 
you cannot help, but you can lessen it 
by making use of such aids to greater 
independence as wearing short skirts 
and riding astride, and having at least 
as good a horse as there is in the out- 
fit. Then you will get the pleasure 
from your outing that you have the 
right to expect — that is, if you adhere 
to one other bit of advice, or rather 
two. 



8/ 

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h 



The first is : See that for your camp- 
ing trip is provided a man cook. 

I wish that I could put a charm over 
the next few words so that only the 
woman reader could understand, but 
as I cannot I must repeat boldly : 
Dear woman who goes hunting with 
her husband, be sure that you have it 
understood that you do no cooking, or 
dishwashing. I think that the reason 
women so often dislike camping out is 
because the only really disagreeable part 
of it is left to them as a matter of course. 
Cooking out of doors at best is trying, 
and certainly you cannot be care free, 
camp-life's greatest charm, when you 
have on your mind the boiling of prunes 
and beans, or when tears are starting 
from your smoke-inflamed eyes as you 
broil the elk steak for dinner. No, 
indeed ! See that your guide or your 






m 



T 



horse vi knows how to cook, 

and expects to do it. He is used to 8 
id, anyway, is paid tor it. Ho is N 
earning his living, you arc taking a 3 
ition. £ 

Now tor the second advice, which is p 
dicil to the above : In return tor 
g to potter with the tood and 
tinwa Eat 

ever] : s set before you, shut 

your eyes to possible dirt, or, it you 
leave the particular horror in 
ched, but without com- 
ment. Perhaps in d on you may 
assume the role or cook yourself Oh, 
if you do, you only ex- 
your woes for worse or.es. 
It you provide yourself with the fol- 
cles and insist upon having 
• reserved for you, and then let the 
cook furnish everything else, you will 
ill right : — 




TEAKS STARTING FROM YOUR SMOKE-INFLAMED . 



43 



An aluminum plate made double for hot 
m water. This is a very little trouble to fill, 
n and insures a comfortable meal ; other- 
jn wise your meat and vegetables will be 
d cold before you can eat them, and the 
P gravy will have a thin coating of ice on 
o it. It is always cold night and morning 
in the mountains. And if you do not 
need the plate heated you do not have 
to fill it; that's all. I am sure my hot- 
water plate often saved me from indi- 
gestion and made my meals things to 
enjoy instead of to endure. 

Two cups and saucers of white enamel 
ware. They always look clean and do 
not break. 

One silver-plated knife and fork and 
two teaspoons. 

One folding camp chair. 
N. B. — Provide your husband or 
brother or sister precisely the same ; no 
more, no less. 






Japanese napkin 'S, enough to provide 
two a day for the party. 

Tzvo white enamel vegetable dishes. 

One folding camp table. 

One candle lamp, with enough candles. 

Then leave all the rest of the cook- 
ing outfit to your cook and trust in 
Providence. (If you do not approve 
of Providence, a full aluminum cooking 
outfit can be bought so that one pot or 
pan nests in the other, the whole very 
complete, compact and light.) 

Come what may, you have your own 
particular clean hot plate, cup and 
saucer, knife, fork, spoon and napkin, 
with a table to eat from and a chair to 
sit on and a lamp to see by, if you are 
eating after dark — which often hap- 
pens — and nothing else matters, but 
food. 

If you want to be canny you will 




have somewhere in your own pack a 
modest supply of condensed soups and 
vegetables, a box or two of meat 
crackers, and three or four bottles of 
bouillon, to be brought out on occa- 
sions of famine. Anyway it is a com- 
fort to know that you have provided 
against the wolf. 

So much for your part of the eating; 
now for the sleeping. If you do not 
sleep warm and comfortable at night, 
the joys of camping are as dust in the 
mouth. The most glorious morning 
that Nature ever produced is a weari- 
ness to the flesh of the owl-eyed. So 
whatever else you leave behind, be sure 
your sleeping arrangements are com- 
fortable. The following is the result of 
three years' experience : — 

A piece of waterproof brown canvas,*] by 
10 feet, bound with tape and supplied 



46 



with two heavy leather straps nine feet 
long, with strong buckles at one end and 
fastened to the canvas by means of can- 
vas loops, and one leather strap six feet 
long that crosses the other two at right 
angles. 

One rubber air bed, 36 by 76 inches 
(don't take a narrower size or you will 
be uncomfortable), fitted with large size 
double valve at each end. This bed is 
six inches thick when blown full of air. 
Be sure that sides are inserted, thus 
making two seams to join together the 
top and bottom six inches apart. If the 
top and bottom are fastened directly to- 
gether, your bed slopes down at the 
sides, which is always disagreeable. 

A sleeping bag, with the canvas cover 
made the full 36 inches wide. This 
cover should hold two blanket bags 
of different weight, and if you are wise 




V 

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f\ 




you will have made an eider-down bag 
to fit inside all of these for very cold 
weather. The eider bag costs about 
j\ $16.00 or $18.00, but is worth it if you 
p are going to camp out in tne moun- 
tains after August. Do without one or 
two summer hats, but get it, for it is 
the keynote of camp comfort. 

Then you want a lamb's wool night 
wrapper, a neutral grey or brown in 
color, a set of heavy night flannels, 
some heavy woollen stockings and a 
woollen tarn o' shanter large enough to 
pull down over the ears. A hot-water 
bag, also, takes up no room and is 
heavenly on a freezing night when the 
wind is howling through the trees and 
snow threatens. N. B. — See that your 
husband or brother has a similar outfit, 
or he will borrow yours. 

The sleeping bags should be sepa- 




v^ 



rated and dried either by sun or fire 
every other day. $ j 

Always keep all your sleeping things n 
together in your bed roll, and your hus- ^1 
band's things together in his bed bun- p 
die. It will save you many a sigh p 
and weary hunt in the dark and cold. § 
The tent and such things, you can afford 
to leave to your guide or to luck. If 
one wishes to provide a tent, brown 
canvas is far preferable to white. It 
does not make a glare of light, nor does 
it stand out aggressively in the land- 
scape. You have your little nightly 
kingdom waiting for you and can sleep 
cosily if nothing else is provided. 
Whenever possible, get your bed blown 
up and your sleeping bags in order on 
top and your sleeping things together 
where you can put your hands on them 
during the daylight, or if that is impos- 




sible, make it the first thing you do 
when you make camp, while the cook 
is getting supper. Then, as you eat 
supper and sit near the camp fire to 
keep warm, you have the sweet con- 
sciousness that over there in the black- 
ness is a snug little nest all ready to 
receive your tired self. And if some 
morning you want to see what you have 
escaped, just unscrew the air valve to 
your bed before you rise, and when you 
come down on the hard, bumpy ground, 
in less time than it takes to tell, you 
will agree with me that there is nothing 
so rare as resting on air. Nimrod used 
to play this trick on me occasionally 
when it was time to get up — it is more 
efficacious than any alarm clock — but 
somehow he never seemed to enjoy it 
when I did it to him. 

For riding, it is better to carry your 



own saddle and bridle and to buy a 
saddle horse upon leaving the railroad. 
You can look to the guides for all the 
rest, such as pack saddles, pack animals, 
etc. 

My saddle is a strong but light-weight 
California model ; that is, with pommel 
and cantle on a Whitman tree. It is 
fitted with gun-carrying case ot the 
same leather and saddle-bag on the skirt 
of each side, and has a leather roll at 
the back strapped on to carry an extra 
jacket and a slicker. (A rain-coat is 
most important. I use a small size of 
the New York mounted policemen's 
mackintosh, made by Goodyear. It 
opens front and back and has a protect- 
ing cape for the hands.) The saddle 
has also small pommel bags in which 
are matches, compass, leather thongs, 
knife and a whistle (this last in case I 



51 



V 
O 
M 

N 
D 
E 
R 
F 
O 
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I. SADDLE COVER FOR WET WEATHER. 

Designed by A. A. Anderson. 

II. POLICEMAN'S equestrian rain coat. 




get lost), and there are rings and strings 
in which other bundles such as lunch 
can be attached while on the march. A 
horsehair army saddle blanket saves the 
animal's back. Nimrod's saddle is ex- 
actly like mine, only with longer and 
larger stirrups. 

You have now your personal things 
for eating, sleeping and riding. It 
remains but to clothe yourself and you 
are ready to start. Provide yourselr 
with two or three champagne baskets 
covered with brown waterproof can- 
vas, with stout handles at each end 
and two leather straps going round the 
basket to buckle the lid down, and 
a stronger strap going lengthwise over 
all. Or if you do not mind a little 
more expense, telescopes made of leath- 
eroid, about 22 inches long, 1 1 inches 
wide and 9 inches deep, with the lower 






corners rounded so they will not stick 
into the horse, and fitted with straps 
and handles, make the ideal travelling 
case ; for they can be shipped from 
place to place on the railroad and can 
be packed, one on each side of a horse. 
They are much to be preferred to the 
usual Klondike bag for convenience in 
packing and unpacking one's things 
and in protecting them. 

It is hardly necessary to say that 
clothes have to be kept down to the 
limit of comfort. Into the telescopes or 
baskets should go warm flannels, extra 
pair of heavy boots, several flannel shirt 
waists, extra riding habit and bloomers, 
fancy neck ribbons and a belt or two — 
for why look worse than your best at 
any time? — a long warm cloak and a 
chamois jacket for cold weather, snow 
overshoes, warm gloves and mittens too, 




§ 
T 



o 

M 

M 

A 

E ' 

N 

D 

E 

R 

F 

O 

o 

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and some woollen stockings. Be sure 
you take flannels. This is the advice 
of one who never wears them at any 
other time. A veil or two is very use- 
ful, as the wind is often high and biting, 
and I was much annoyed with wisps ol 
hair around my eyes, and also with my 
hair coming down while on horseback, 
until I hit upon the device of tying a 
brown liberty silk veil over the hair and 
partially over the ears before putting 
on a sombrero. This veil was not at 
all unbecoming, being the same color as 
my hair, and it served the double pur- 
pose of keeping unruly locks in order 
and keeping my ears warm. A hair net 
is also useful. 

Then you must not forget a rubber 
bath tub, a rubber wash basin, sponge, 
towels, soap, and toilet articles generally, 
including camphor ice for chapped lips 



and pennyroyal vaseline salve for insect 
bites. A brown linen case is invalu- 
able to hold all these toilet necessa- 
ries, so that you can find them quickly. 
A sewing kit should be supplied, a flask 
of whiskey, and a small "first-aid" out- 
fit; a bottle of Perry Davis pain killer 
or Pond's extract; but no more bottles 
than must be, as they are almost sure 
to be broken. In your husband's box, 
ammunition takes the place of toilet 
articles. I shall pass over the guns with 
the bare mention that I use a 30.30 
Winchester, smokeless. 

For railroad purposes all this outfit 
for two goes into two trunks and a box 
— one trunk for all the bedding and 
night things: the other for all the cloth- 
ing, guns, ammunition, eating things, 
and incidentals. The box holds the 
saddles, bridles, and horse things. 




F 

§ 

T 





In a pack train, the bed-rolls, weigh- 
ing about fifty pounds each, go on either 
side of one horse, and the telescopes on 
each side of another horse — in both 
cases not a full load, and leaving room 
on the top of the pack for a tent and 
other camp things. The saddles, oi 
course, go on the saddle horses. The 
cost of such an outfit, in New York, 
is about two hundred dollars each ; but 
it lasts for years and brings you in large 
returns in health and consequent hap- 
piness. 

I am willing to wager my horsehair 
rope (specially designed for keeping off 
snakes) that a summer in the Rockies 
would enable you to cheat time of at 
least two years, and you would come 
home and join me in the ranks of con- 
verts from the usual summer sort of 
thing. Will you try it? If you do, 



how you will pity your unfortunate 
friends who have never known what it 
is to sleep on the south side of a sage 
brush, and honestly say in the morning, 
" It is wonderful how well I am feeling." 
But to begin : — 



J i V 1 1 





III. 

THE FIRST PLUNGE 

OF THE 

WOMAN TENDERFOOT. 




III. 






T was about midnight 
in the end of August 
when Nimrod and I 
tumbled off the train 
at Market Lake, Idaho. 
Next morning, after a 
comfortable night's rest at the "hotel," 
our rubber beds, sleeping bags, saddles, 
guns, clothing, and ourselves were 
packed into a covered wagon, drawn 
by four horses, and we started for 
Jackson's Hole in charge of a driver 
who knew the road perfectly. At least, 
that was what he said, so of course he 




must have known it. But his memory 
failed him sadly the first day out, which 
reduced him to the necessity of inquir- 
ing of the neighbours. As these were 
unsociably placed from thirty to fifty p 
miles apart, there were many times p 
when the little blind god of chance 8 
ruled our course. 

We put up for the night at Rex- 
burgh, after forty long miles of alkali 
dust. The Mormon religion has sent a 
thin arm up into that country, and the 
keeper of the log building he called a 
hotel was of that faith. The history 
of our brief stay there belongs properly 
to the old torture days of the Inqui- 
sition, for the Mormon's possessions of 
living creatures were many, and his 
wives and children were the least of 
them. 

Another day of dust and long hard 




miles over gradually rising hills, with 
the huge mass of the Tetons looming 
ever nearer, and the next day we 
climbed the Teton Pass. 

There is nothing extraordinary about 
climbing the Teton Pass — to tell about. 
We just went up, and then we went 
down. It took six horses half a day to 
draw us up the last mile — some twenty 
thousand seconds of conviction on my 
part (unexpressed, of course; see side 
talk) that the next second would find 
us dashed to everlasting splinters. And 
it took ten minutes to get us down ! 

Of the two, I preferred going up. If 
you have ever climbed a greased pole 
during Fourth of July festivities in your 
grandmother's village, you will under- 
stand. 

When we got to the bottom there 
was something different. Our driver 







\ 



P<^^y^ 




informed us that in two hours we should 
be eating dinner at the ranch house 

in Jackson's Hole, where we expected ti'' 

to stop for a while to recuperate from 'J 

the past year's hard grind and the past p 

two weeks of travel. This was good ^ 

news, as it was then five o'clock and o 
. T 

our midday meal had been light — de- 
spite the abundance of coffee, soggy 
potatoes, salt pork, wafer slices of meat 
swimming in grease, and evaporated 
apricots wherein some nice red ants 
were banqueting. 

" We'll just cross the Snake River, 
and then it'll be plain sailing," he said. 
Perhaps it was so. I was inexperi- 
enced in the West. This was what fol- 
lowed : — 

Closing the door on the memory of 
my recent perilous passage, I prepared 
to be calm inwardly, as I like to think 




I was outwardly. The Snake River 
is so named because for every mile it 
goes ahead it retreats half way along- 
side to see how well it has been done. 
I mention this as a pleasing instance 
of a name that really describes the 
thing named. But this is after knowl- 
edge. 

About half past five, we came to a 
rolling tumbling yellow stream where 
the road stopped abruptly with a horrid 
drop into water that covered the hubs 
of the wheels. The current was strong, 
and the horses had to struggle hard 
to gain the opposite bank. I began to 
thank my patron saint that the Snake 
River was crossed. 

Crossed ? Oh, no ! A narrow strip 
of pebbly road, and the high willows 
suddenly parted to disclose another 
stream like the last, but a little deeper, 




Hll!'':': ,! 



^._ 



Willi"""" 




a little wider, a little worse. We crossed 
it. I made no comments. 

At the third stream the horses re- 
belled. There are many things four 
horses can do on the edge of a wicked 
looking river to make it uncomfortable, 
but at last they had to go in, plunging 
madly, and dragging the wagon into 
the stream nearly broadside, which 
made at least one in the party consider 
the frailty of human contrivances when 
matched against a raging flood. 

Soon there was another stream. I 
shall not describe it. When we eventu- 
ally got through it, the driver stopped 
his horses to rest, wiped his brow, went 
around the wagon and pulled a few 
ropes tighter, cut a willow stick and 
mended his broken whip, gave a hitch 
to his trousers, and remarked as he 
started the horses : 

" Now, when we get through the 





Snake River on here a piece, we'll be 
all right." 

" I thought we had been crossing it 
for the past hour," I was feminine 
enough to gasp. 

"Oh, yes, them's forks of it; but the 
main stream's on ahead, and it's mighty 
treacherous, too," was the calm reply. 

When we reached the Snake River, 
there was no doubt that the others were 
mere forks. Fortunately, Joe Miller 
and his two sons live on the opposite 
bank, and make a living by helping 
people escape destruction from the 
mighty waters. Two men waved us 
back from the place where our driver 
was lashing his horses into the rushing 
current, and guided us down stream 
some distance. One of them said : 

" This yere ford changes every week, 
but I reckon you might try here." 

We did. 





Had my hair been of the dramatic 
kind that realises situations, it would 
have turned white in the next ten min- 
utes. The water was over the horses' 
backs immediately, the wagon box was 
afloat, and we were being borne rapidly 
down stream in the boiling seething 
flood, when the wheels struck a shingly 
bar which gave the horses a chance to halt 
swim, half plunge. The two men, who 
were on horseback, each seized one of 
the leaders, and kept his head pointed 
for a cut in the bank, the only place 
where we could get out. 

Everything in the wagon was afloat. 
A leather case with a forty dollar fish- 
ing rod stowed snugly inside slipped 
quietly off down stream. I rescued my 
camera from the same fate just in time. 
Overshoes, wraps, field glasses, guns, 
were suddenly endowed with motion. 





Another moment and we should surely 
have sunk, when the horses, by a su- 
preme effort, managed to scramble on 
to the bank, but were too exhausted to 
draw more than half of the wagon 
after them, so that it was practically on 
end in the water, our outfit submerged, 
of course, and ourselves reclining as 
gracefully as possible on the backs of 
the seats. 

Had anything given away then, there 
might have been a tragedy. The two 
men immediately fastened a rope to the 
tongue of the wagon, and each winding 
an end around the pommel of his sad- 
dle, set his cow pony pulling. Our 
horses made another effort, and up we 
came out of the water, wet, storm tossed, 
but calm. Oh, yes — calm ! 

After that, earth had no terrors for 
me ; the worst road that we could bump 



over was but an incident. I was not 
surprised that it grew dark very soon, 
and that we blundered on and on for 
hours in the night until the near wheeler 
just lay down in the dirt, a dark spot 
in the dark road, and our driver, after 
coming back from a tour of inspection 
on foot, looked worried. I mildly asked 
if we would soon cross Snake River, 
but his reply was an admission that he 
was lost. There was nothing visible 
but the twinkling stars and a dim out- 
line of the grim Tetons. The prospect 
was excellent for passing the rest of the 
night where we were, famished, freez- 
ing, and so tired I could hardly speak. 
But Nimrod now took command. 
His first duty, of course, being a man, 
was to express his opinion of the driver 
in terms plain and comprehensive; then 
he loaded his rifle and fired a shot. If 




there were any mountaineers around, 
they would understand the signal and 
answer. 

We waited. All was silent as before 
Two more horses dropped to the ground. 
Then he sent another loud report into 
the darkness. In a few moments we 
thought we heard a distant shout, then 
the report of a gun not far away. 

Nimrod mounted the only standing 
horse and went in the direction of the 
sound. Then followed an interminable 
silence. I hallooed, but got no answer. 
The wildest fears for Nimrod's safety 
tormented me. He had fallen into a 
gully, the horse had thrown him, he was 
lost. 

Then I heard a noise and listened 
eagerly. The driver said it was a coy- 
ote howling up on the mountain. At 
last voices did come to me from out of 



the blackness, and Nimrod returned 
with a man and a fresh horse. The man 
was no other than the owner of the 
house for which we were searching, and 
in ten minutes I was drying myself by 
his fireplace, while his hastily aroused 
wife was preparing a midnight supper 
for us. 

To this day, I am sure that driver's 
worst nightmare is when he lives over 
again the time when he took a tender- 
foot and his wife into Jackson's Hole, 
and, but for the tenderfoot, would have 
made them stay out overnight, wet, 
famished, frozen, within a stone's throw 
of the very house for which they were 
looking. 








?\ 



IV. 

WHICH TREATS OF THE 
IMPS AND MY ELK. 





IV. 



F you want to see elk, 
you just follow up the 
road till you strike a 
trail on the left, up over 
that hog's back, and 
that will bring you in 
a mile or so on to a grassy flat, and in 
two or three miles more you come to a 
lake back in the mountains." 

Mrs. Cummings, the speaker, was no 
ordinary woman of Western make. She 
had been imported from the East by 
her husband three years before. She 
had been 'forelady in a corset factory,' 




when matrimony had enticed her away, 
and the thought that walked beside her 
as she baked, and washed, and fed the 
calves, was that some day she would go 
'back East.' And this in spite of the 
fact that for those parts she was very 
comfortable. 

Her log house was the largest in the 
country, barring Captain Jones's, her 
nearest neighbour, ten miles up at Jack- 
son's Lake, and his was a hotel. Hers 
could boast of six rooms and two 
clothes' closets. The ceilings were 
white muslin to shut off the rafters, the 
sitting room had wall-paper and a rag 
carpet, and in one corner was the post- 
office. 

The United States Government Post- 
office of Deer, Wyoming, took up two 
compartments of Mrs. Cummings' writ- 
ing desk, and she was called upon to be 




F 

Q 

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T 







SHE WAS POSTMISTRESS TWICE A WEEK. 




postmistress fifteen minutes twice a 
week, when the small boy, mounted on 
a tough little pony, happened around 
with the leather bag which carried the 
mail to and from Jackson, thirty miles 
below. 

" I'd like some elk meat mighty well 
for dinner," Mrs. Cummings continued, 
as she leaned against the kitchen door 
and watched us mount our newly ac- 
quired horses, "but you won't find 
game around here without a guide — 
Easterners never do." 

Nimrod and I started off in joyous 
mood. The secret of it, the fascination 
of the wild life, was revealed to me. At 
last I understood why the birds sing. 
The glorious exhilaration of the moun- 
tains, the feeling that life is a rosy dream, 
and that all the worry and the fever and 
the fret of man's making is a mere 



illusion that has faded away into the 
past, and is not worth while ; that the 
real life is to be free, to fly over the 
grassy mountain meadow with never 
a limitation offence or house, with the 
eternal peaks towering around you, ter- 
rible in their grandeur and vastness, yet 
inviting. 

We struck the trail all right, we 
thought, but it soon disappeared and 
we had to govern our course by imagi- 
nation, an uncertain guide at best. We 
got into dreadful tangles of timber; the 
country was all strange, and the trees 
spread over the mountain for miles, so 
that it was like trying to find the way 
under a blanket ; but we kept on rid- 
ing our horses over fallen logs and 
squeezing them between trees, all the 
time keeping a sharp watch over them, 
for they were fresh and scary. 





Finally, after three hours' hard climb- 
ing, we emerged from the forest on to 
a great bare shoulder of the mountain, 
from which the whole country around, 
vast and beautiful, could be seen. We 
took bearings and tried to locate that 
lake, and we finally decided that a 
wooded basin three miles away looked 
likely to contain it. 

In order to get to it, we had to cross 
a wooded ravine, very steep and torn 
out by a recent cloudburst. We rode 
the horses down places that I shudder 
in remembering, and I had great 
trouble in keeping away from the front 
feet of my horse as I led him, especially 
when there were little gullies that had 
to be jumped. 

It was exciting enough, and hard 
work, too, every nerve on a tingle and 
one's heart thumping with the unwont- 



(C 


v. 






^ 


■ 

( 






/ 






A 


k 




t" 




,-'"'A v 


y^\ 


/j\ 





H. 




ed exercise at that altitude; but oh, the 
glorious air, the joy of life and motion 
that was quite unknown to my recep- 
tion- and theatre-going self in the dim 
far away East ! 

We searched for that lake all day, 
and at nightfall went home confident 
that we could find it on the morrow. 

Mrs. Cummings' smile clearly ex- 
pressed ' I told you so,' and she re- 
marked as she served supper : " When 
my husband comes home next week, 
he will take you where you can find 
game." 

The next morning we again took 
some lunch in the saddle bag and start- 
ed for that elusive spot we had chris- 
tened Cummings' Lake. About three 
o'clock we found it — a beautiful patch 
of water in the heart of the forest, 
nestling like a jewel, back in the moun- 
tains. 




F 

8 

T 




We picketed the horses at a safe dis- 
tance, so that they could not be seen or 
heard from the lake. At one end the 
shore sloped gradually into the water, 
and here Nimrod discovered many 
tracks of elk, a few deer, and one set of 
black bear. He said the lake was evi- 
dently a favourite drinking place, that 
a band of elk had been coming daily 
to water, and that, according to their 
habits, they ought to come again be- 
fore dusk. 

So we concealed ourselves on a little 
bluff to the right and waited. The sun 
had begun to cast long lines on the 
earth, and the little circle of water was 
already in shadow when Nimrod held 
up his finger as a warning for silence. 
We listened. We were so still that the 
whole world seemed to be holding its 
breath. 

I heard a faint noise as of a snapping 



branch, then some light thuds along the 
ground, and to the left of us out of the 
dark forest, a dainty creature flitted 
along the trail and playfully splashed 
into the water. Six others of her sis- 
ters followed her, with two little ones, 
and they were all splashing about in 
the water like so many sportive mer- 
maids when their lordly master ap- 
peared — a fine bull elk who seemed to 
me, as he sedately approached the edge 
of the lake, to be nothing but horns. 

I shall never forget the picture of this 
family at home — the quiet lake encir- 
cled by forest and towered over by 
mountains; the gentle graceful crea- 
tures full of life playing about in the 
water, now drinking, now splashing it 
in cooling showers upon one another; 
the solicitude of a mother that her 
young one should come to no harm ; 






and then the head of them all proceed- 
ing with dignity to bathe with his 
harem. 

Had I to do again what followed, I 
hope I should act differently. Nimrod 
was watching them with a rapt expres- 
sion, quite forgetful of the rifle in his 
hands, when I, who had never seen any- 
thing killed, touched his arm and whis- 
pered : " Shoot, shoot now, if you are 
going to." 

The report of the rifle rang out like 
a cannon. The does fled away as if by 
magic. The stag tried also to get to 
shore, but the ball had inflicted a wound 
which partially paralysed his hindquar- 
ters. At the sight of the blood and the 
big fellow's struggles to get away, the 
horror of the thing swept over me. 

"Oh, kill him, kill him!" I wailed. 
" Don't let him suffer ! " 



But here the hunter in Nimrod an- 
swered : " If I kill him now, I shall 
never be able to get him. Wait until 
he gets out of the water." 

The next few seconds, with that 
struggling thing in the water, seemed 
an eternity of agony to me. Then an- 
other loud bang caused the proud head 
with its weight of antlers to sink to the 
wet bank never to rise again. 

Later, as I dried my tears, I asked 
Nimrod : 

" Where is the place to aim if you want 
to kill an animal instantly, so that he will 
not suffer, and never know whathit him?" 

" The best place is the shoulder." He 
showed me the spot on his elk. 

"But wouldn't he suffer at all?" 

" Well, of course, if you hit him in 
the brain, he will never know; but that 
is a very fine shot. Your target is only 




an inch or two, here between the eye 
and the ear, and the head moves more 
than the body. But," he said, " you 
would not kill an elk after the way you 
have wept over this one ? " 

" If — if I were sure he would not 
suffer, I might kill just one," I said, 
conscious of my inconsistencies. My 
woman's soul revolted, and yet I was 
out West for all the experiences that 
the life could give me, and I knew, if 
the chance came just right, that one elk 
would be sacrificed to that end. 

The next day, much to Mrs. Cum- 
mings' surprise, we had elk steak, the 
most delicious of meat when properly 
cooked. The next few days slipped by. 
We were always in the open air, riding 
about in those glorious mountains, and 
it was the end of the week when a turn 
of the wheel brought my day. 









First, it becomes necessary to confide 
in you. Fear is a very wicked companion 
who, since nursery days, had troubled me 
very little; but when I arrived out West, 
he was waiting for me, and, so that I need 
never be without him, he divided him- 
self into a band of little imps. 

Each imp had a special duty, and 
never left me until he had been crushed 
in silent but terrible combat. There 
was the imp who did not like to be 
alone in the mountains, and the imp 
who was sure he was going to be lost 
in those wildernesses, and the imp who 
quaked at the sight of a gun, and the 
imp who danced a mad fierce dance 
when on a horse. All these had been 
conquered, or at least partially re- 
duced to subjection, but the imp who 
sat on the saddle pommel when there 
was a ditch or stream to be jumped had 



A 



hitherto obliged me to dismount and 
get over the space on foot. 

This morning, when we came to a 
nasty boggy place, with several small 
water cuts running through it, I obeyed 
the imp with reluctance. Well, we got 
over it — Blondey, the imp, and I — with 
nothing worse than wet feet and shat- 
tered nerves. 

I attempted to mount, and had one 
foot in the stirrup and one hand on the 
pommel, when Blondey started. Like 
the girl in the song, I could not get up, 
I could not get down, and although I 
had hold of the reins, I had no free 
hand to pull them in tighter, and you 
may be sure the imp did not help me. 
Blondey, realising there was something 
wrong, broke into a wild gallop across 
country, but I clung on, expecting every 
moment the saddle would turn, until I 





got my foot clear from the stirrup. 
Then I let go just as Blondey was 
gathering himself together for another 
ditch. 

I was stunned, but escaped any seri- 
ous hurt. Nimrod was a great deal 
more undone than I. He had not dared 
to go fast for fear of making Blondey 
go faster, and he now came rushing up, 
with the fear of death upon his face 
and the most terrible swears on his lips. 

Although a good deal shaken, I be- 
gan to laugh, the combination was so 
incongruous. Nimrod rarely swears, 
and was now quite unconscious what 
his tongue was doing. Upon being as- 
sured that all was well, he started after 
Blondey and soon brought him back to 
me; but while he was gone the imp and 
I had a mortal combat. 

I did up my hair, rearranged my 




habit, and, rejecting NimrocTs offer of 
his quieter horse, remounted Blondey. 
We all jumped the next ditch, but the 
shock was too much for the imp in his 
weakened condition; he tumbled off 
the pommel, and I have never seen him 
since. 

Our course lay along the hills on the 
east bank of Snake River that day. We 
discovered another beautiful sapphire 
lake in a setting of green hills. Several 
ducks were gliding over its surface. 
We watched them, in concealment of 
course, and we saw a fish hawk capture 
his dinner. Then we quietly continued 
along the ridge of a high bluff until we 
came to an outstretched point, where 
beneath us lay the Snake Valley with 
its fickle-minded river winding through. 

The sun was just dropping behind 
the great Tetons, massed in front of us 





across the valley. We sat on our horses 
motionless, looking at the peaceful and 
majestic scene, when out from the shad- 
ows on the sandy flats far below us 
came a dark shadow, and then leisurely 
another and another. They were elk, 
two bulls and a doe, grazing placidly in 
a little meadow surrounded by trees. 

We kept as still as statues. 

Nimrod said. " There is your chance." 

" Yes," I echoed, " here is my 
chance." 

We waited until they passed into the 
trees again. Then we dismounted. 
Nimrod handed me the rifle, saying: 

" There are seven shots in it. I will 
stay behind with the horses." 

I took the gun without a word and 
crept down the mountain side, keeping 
under cover as much as possible. The 
sunset quiet surrounded me ; the deadly 




R 
F 

§ 

T 




quiet of but one idea — to creep upon 
that elk and kill him — possessed me. 
That gradual painful drawing nearer to 
my prey seemed a lifetime. I was con- 
scious of nothing to the right, or to the 
left of me, only of what I was going to 
do. There were pine woods and scrub 
brush and more woods. Then, sud- 
denly, I saw him standing by the river 
about to drink. I crawled nearer until 
I was within one hundred and fifty yards 
of him, when at the snapping of a twig 
he raised his head with its crown of 
branching horn. He saw nothing, so 
turned again to drink. 

Now was the time. I crawled a few 
feet nearer and raised the deadly weap- 
on. The stag turned partly away from 
me. In another moment he would be 
gone. I sighted along the metal bar- 
rel and a terrible bang went booming 




.itrfSJiSsno 



through the dim secluded spot. The 
elk raised his proud, antlered head and 
looked in my direction. Another shot 
tore through the air. Without another 
move the animal dropped where he 
stood. He lay as still as the stones be- 
side him, and all was quiet again in the 
twilight. 

I sat on the ground where I was and 
made no attempt to go near him. So 
that was all. One instant a magnificent 
breathing thing, the next — nothing. 

Death had been so sudden. I had no 
regret, I had no triumph — just a sort 
of wonder at what I had done — a sur- 
prise that the breath of lite could be 
taken away so easily. 

Meanwhile, Nimrod had become 
alarmed at the long silence, and, tying 
the horses, had followed me down the 
mountain. He was nearly down when 




he heard the shots, and now came rush- 
ing up. 

" I have done it," I said in a dull 
tone, pointing at the dark, quiet object 
on the bank. 

" You surely have." 

Nimrod paced the distance — it was 
one hundred and thirty-five yards — as 
we went up to the elk. How beautiful 
his coat was, glossy and shaded in 
browns, and those great horns — eleven 
points — that did not seem so big now 
to my eyes. 

Nimrod examined the carcass. 

" You are an apt pupil," he said. 
"You put a bullet through his heart 
and another through his brain." 

" Yes," I said ; " he never knew what 
killed him." But I felt no glory in the 
achievement. 




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V. 



LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS. 



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AVE you ever been lost 
in the mountains'? — not 
the peaceful, cultivated 
child hills of the Cats- 
kills, but in real moun- 
tains, where the first out- 
post of civilisation, a lonely ranch house, 
is two weeks' travel away, and where 
that stream on your left is bound for the 
Pacific Ocean, and that stream on your 
right over there will, after four thousand 
miles, find its way into the Atlantic 
Ocean, and where the air you breathe is 



twelve thousand feet above those seas ? 
I have. 

The situation is naturally one you 
would not fish out of the grab bag of 
fate if you could avoid it. When you 
suddenly find it on your hands, however, 
there is only one thing to do — keep 
your nerve, grasp it firmly, and look, at 
it closely. If you have a horse and a 
gun and a cartridge, it is not so bad. I 
had these, and I had better than all these, 
I had Nimrod — but only half of Nim- 
rod. The working half was chained up 
by my fears, for such is the power of a 
woman. I will explain. 

In crossing over the Continental Di- 
vide of the Rocky Mountains, we were 
guests in the pack train of a man who 
was equally at home in aNew York draw- 
ing-room or on a Wyoming bear hunt, 
and he had made mountain travelling a 



fine art. Besides ourselves, there were 
the horse wrangler, the cook (of whom 
you shall hear later), and sixteen horses, 
and we started from Jackson's Lake for 
the Big Horn Basin, several hundred 
miles over the pathless uninhabited 
mountains. 

No one who has not tried it knows 
how difficult it is for two or three men 
to keep so many pack animals in line, 
with no pathway to guide ; and once they 
are started going nicely, it is nothing- 
short of a calamity to stop them, especial- 
ly when it is necessary to cover a cer- 
tain number of miles before nightfall in 
order that they may have feed. 

We were on the Pacific side of the 
Wind River Divide, and must get to the 
top that night. The horses were travel- 
ling nicely up the difficult ascent, so when 
Nimrod got his feet wet crossing a 




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stream about noon, he and I thought we 
would just stop and have a little lunch, 
dry the shoes, and catch up with the 
pack train in half an hour. 

From the minute the last horse van- 
ished out of sight behind a rock, desola- 
tion settled upon me. That slender line 
of living beings somewhere on ahead 
was the only link between us and civi- 
lisation — civilisation which I under- 
stood, which was human and touchable 
— and the awful vastness of those end- 
less peaks, wherein lurked a hundred 
dangers, and which seemed made but to 
annihilate me. 

Of course, the fire would not burn, 
and the shoes would not dry. Blondey 
wandered off and had to be brought 
back, and it seemed an age before we 
were again in the saddle, following the 
trail the animals had made. 



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THE TRAIL WAS LOST IN A GULLY. 



w But Nimrod was blithe and uncon- 

m cerned, so I made no sign of the craven 
n soul within me. For an hour or two we 



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jn followed the trail, urging our horses as 
d much as possible, but the ascent was 
P difficult, and we could not gain on the 
o speed of the pack train. Then the trail 
was lost in a gully where the animals had 
gone in every direction to get through. 
My nerves were now on the rack of 
suspense. 

Where were they *? Surely, we must 
have passed them ! We were on the 
wrong trail, perhaps going away from 
them at every step ! 

The screws of fear grew tighter every 
moment during the following hours. 
Nimrod soon found what he considered 
to be the trail, and we proceeded. 

At last we got to the top. No sign 
of them. I could have screamed aloud; 



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a great wave of soul destroying fear en- 
compassed me — wild black fear. I 
could not reason it out. We were lost ! 

Nimrod scoffed at me. The track 
was still plain, he said; but I could not 
read the hieroglyphics at my feet, and 
there was no room in my mind for con- 
fidence or hope. Fear filled it all. 

There we were with the mighty forces 
of the insensate world around, so pitiless, 
so silently cruel, it seemed to my city- 
bred soul. It was the spot where Nature 
spread her wonders before us, one tiny 
spring dividing its waters east and west 
for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, for 
this was the highest point. 

We attempted to cross that hateful 
divide, that at another time might have 
looked so beautiful, when suddenly Nim- 
rod's horse plunged withers deep in a 
bog, and in his struggles to get out 






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threw Nimrod head first from the saddle 

8 into the mud, where he lay quite still. 

"n I faced the horror of death at that mo- 

jn merit. Of course, this was what I had 

d been expecting, but had not been able 

p to put into words. Nimrod killed ! My 

8 other fears dwindled away before this 

one, or, rather, it seemed to wrap them 

in itself, as in a cloak. For an instant 

I could not move — there alone with a 

dead or wounded man on that awful 

mountain top. 

But here was an emergency where I 
could do something besides blindly fol- 
low another's lead. I caught the fright- 
ened animal as it dashed out of the 
treacherous place (to be horseless is al- 
most a worse fate than to be wounded), 
and Nimrod, who was little hurt, quickly 
recovered and managed to scramble to 
dry ground, and again into the saddle. 




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Forcing our tired horses onward, we V 
again found a trail, supposedly the right $ 
one, but there was that haunting fear n^ 
that it was not. For the only signs were rX 
the bending of the grass and the occa- § 
sional rubbing of the trees where the R 
animals had passed. And these might o 
have been done by a band of elk. 

It was growing dusk and still no pack 
train in sight. No criminal on trial for 
his life could have felt more wretchedly 
apprehensive than I. At last we came 
to a stream. Nimrod, who had dis- 
mounted to examine more closely, said: 

" The trail turns off here, but it is very 
dim in the grass." 

" Where ?" I asked, anxiously. 

He pointed to the ground. I could 
make out nothing. " Oh, let us hurry ! 
They must have gone on." 

" I think it would be safer to follow 
these tracks for a time at least, to see 




where they come out. There are some 
tracks across the stream there, but they 
are older and dimmer and might have 
been made by elk." 

" Oh, do go on ! Surely the tracks 
across the stream must be the ones.'' 
To go on, on, and hurry, was my one 
thought, my one cry. 

Nimrod yielded. Thus I and my 
wild fear betrayed the hunter's instinct. 
We went on for many weary minutes. 
.We lost all tracks. Then Nimrod fired 
a shot into the air. He would not do 
it before, because he said we were not 
lost, and that there was no need for worry 
— worry, when for hours blind fear had 
held me in torture ! 

There was no answer to the shot. 

In five minutes he fired again. Then 
we heard a report, very faint. I would 
not believe that I had heard it at all. 
I raised my gun and fired. This time a 




shot rattled through the branches over- 
head, unpleasantly near. It was clearly 
from behind us. We turned, and after 
another interchange of shots, the cook 
appeared. 

I was too exhausted to be glad, but a 
feeling of relief glided over me. He 
led us to the stream where Nimrod had 
wanted to turn off, and from there we 
were quickly in camp, very much to our 
host's relief. I dropped at the foot of a 
tree, and said nothing for an hour — my 
companions were men, so I did not have 
to talk if I could not — then I arose as 
usual and was ready for supper. 

Of course, Nimrod was blamed for 
not being a better mountaineer. ' He 
ought to have seen that broken turf by 
the trail,' or those ' blades of fresh pulled 
grass in the pine fork.' How could they 
know that a woman and her fears had 




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hampered him at every step, especially 
as you see there was no need ? 

Always regulate your fears according 
to the situation, and then you will not go 
into the valley of the shadow of death, 
when you are only lost in the mountains. 




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VI. 
THE COOK. 




VI. 



HAD but a bare speak- 
ing acquaintance with 
the grim silent moun- 
taineer who was cook 
to our party. Two days 
after he had appeared 
like an angel of heaven on our gloomy 
path I had an opportunity of knowing 
him better. I quote from my journal : 




Camp Jim, Shoshone Range, Septem- 
ber 23 : They left me alone in camp to- 
day. No, the cook was there. 



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They left me the cook for protection 
against the vast solitude, the mighty 
grandeur of the mountains, and the pos- 
sible, but improbable, bear. Nice man, 
that cook — he confessed with pride to 
many robberies and three murders! Only 
a month before engaging as cook on 
this trip, he had been serving a life term 
for murder; but had been released 
through some political 'pull.' 

Our host, in company with another 
game warden, had discovered him in 
the mountains, where he had gone 
immediately from the penitentiary and 
resumed his unlawful life of killing 
game. But he had hidden his prizes so 
effectively that there was no evidence 
but his own, which, of course, is not 
accepted in law. Thus he welcomed 
these two men of justice to his camp, 
told graphically of his killing — then 






offered them a smoke, smiling the while 
at their discomfiture. 

Both his face and hands were scarred 
from many bar room encounters, and he 
unblushingly dated most of his remarks 
by the period when he ' was rusticatin' 
in the Pen.' He had brought his own 
bed and saddle and pack horses on the 
trip so that he could ' cut loose ' from 
the party in ca',e k things got too hot ' for 
him. 

Such was the cook. 

Immediately after breakfast Nimrod 
and our host equipped themselves for 
the day's hunt, and went off in opposite 
directions, like Huck Finn and T'om Saw- 
yer on the occasion of their memorable 
first smoke. 

Our camp was beside a rushing brook 
in a little glade that was tucked at the 
foot of towering mountains where no 




track had been for years, if ever. 

1 us sighed the mighty pines of 

s forest. Hundreds of miles 

he barrier of nature, were 

hu y of the noise and strife 

of the Here, alone in the 

solitudes, n atomswander- 

ingontheti. ^ and — the 

cook and I. 

I sat on my rubber be it and 

thought — there was , do 

— and was cold, cold f n. 
in, and from the inside out. x 
a thing alive, not even myself— 
but the cook. 

Outside, I could hear him washii. c 
the breakfast tinware, and whistling some 
kind of a jiggling tune that ran up and 
down me like a shiver. This went on 
for an eternity. 

Suddenly it stopped, and I heard the 







faintest crunch on the thin layer or 
snow and the rattling of more snow as 
it slid off my tent from a blow that had 
been struck on the outside. 

I jumped to the door of the tent. It 
was the cook. 

" Purty cold in there, ain't it % You'd 
a good sight better come to the fire. 
Ain't you got a slicker 1 ?" 

I put on a mackintosh and overshoes 
and went to the fire. The weather was 
now indulging in a big flake snow that 
slid stealthily to the ground and disap- 
peared into water on whatever obstacle it 
found there. It found me. The cook 
was cleaning knives — the cooking 
knives, the eating knives, and a full 
set of hunting knives, long and short, 
slim and broad, all sharp and efficacious. 

He handled them lovingly, rubbed 
off some blood rust here and there, and 




occasionally whetted one to a still more 
razor edge and threw it into a near by 
tree, where it stuck, quivering. 

There was no conversation, but I did 
not feel forgotten. 

I turned my back on the cook and 
gazed into the fire, a miserable smould- 
ering affair, and speculated on why I 
had never before noticed how much 
spare time there was in a minute. It 
may have been five of these spacious 
minutes, it may have been fifteen, that 
had passed away when the cook ap- 
proached me. I could feel him com- 
ing. He came very close to me — and 
to the fire. 

He put on some beans. 

Then he went away, and there were 
many more minutes, many more. 

Then something touched my arm. 
At last it had come (what we expect, 



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WHETTED ONE TO A RAZOR EDGE AND THREW IT INTO A TREE 
WHERE IT STUCK QUIVERING. 



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if it be disagreeable, usually does come). 
I never moved a muscle. This time 
the pressure on my arm was unmis- 
takable. I turned quickly and saw — 
the cook — with a gun ! 

The cook, gun, knives, fire, snow, 
and stars danced a mad jig before me 
for an instant. Then the cook suddenly <^ 
resumed his proper position, and I saw 
that his disengaged hand was held in an 
attitude of warning for silence. He 
pointed off into the woods and appeared 
to be listening. Soon I thought I heard 
a snapping of a branch away off up the 
mountain. 

"Bear," the cook whispered. "Fol- 
low me." 

I followed. It was hard work to get 
over logs and stones without noise, in a 
long mackintosh, and, besides, I wished 
that I had brought a gun. I should 




have felt more comfortable about both 
man and beast. I struggled on for a 
while, when the thought suddenly struck 
home that if I went farther I should not 
be able to find my way back to camp. 
Everything is relative, and those empty 
tents and smouldering fire seemed a 
haven of security compared to the sit- 
uation of being unarmed, and lost in 
the wilderness — with the cook. 

I watched my chance and sneaked 
back to camp to get a gun. I was 
willing to believe the cook's bear story, 
but I wanted a gun. When I got to 
camp there were many good reasons for 
not going back. 

After a time I heard two shots close 
at hand, and soon the cook appeared. 
He said he could not find the bear's 
track, and lost me, so thought he had 
better look me up and be on hand in 



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# case I had returned to camp, and the 

m bear should come. 

n I thanked the cook for his solicitude. 

Jn To while away the time, I put up a 

d target and commenced practising with 

p a 30-30 rifle at fifty yards range. 

o I shot very badly. 

The cook obligingly interested him- 
self in my performance and kept tally 
on my aim, pointing out to me when it 
was high, when it was low, to the right 
or to the left. 

Then he took his six shooter and 
put a half dozen bullets in the bull's- 
eye offhand. 

I lost my interest in shooting. 
The cook gave me some lunch, and 
while I was eating he stood before the 
fire looking at it through the fingers of 
his outstretched hand, with a queer 
squint in his cold gray eyes, as though 





sighting along a rifle barrel, while a 
cigarette hung limply from his mouth. 

Then in response to a winning smile 
(after all, a woman's best weapon) he 
opened the floodgates of his thoughts 
and poured into my ears a succession 
of bloodcurdling adventures over which 
the big, big * I ' had dominated. [ 

" Yes," he said musingly of his second 
murder, as he removed his squint from 
the fire to me, and a ghost of a smile 
played around his lips ; " yes, it took 
six shots to keep him quiet, and you 
could have covered all the holes with a 
cap box — and his pard nearly got me. 

" That was the year I lost my pard, 
~ Dick Elsen. We was at camp near 
Fort Fetterman. We called a man 
'Red' — his name was Jim Capse. 
Drink was at the bottom of it. Red he 
sees my pard passing a saloon, and he 

II W I NE5?> LIQUORS 



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says, ' Hello, where did you come from ? 
Come and have a drink ! ' Pard says, 
'No, I don't want nothing!' 'Oh, 
come along and have a drink!' Dick 
says, 'No, thanks, pard, I'm not drink- 
ing to-night.' 'Well, I guess you'll 
have a drink with me ' ; and Red pulls 
out his six shooter. Dick wasn't quick 
enough about throwing up his hands, 
and he gets killed. Then Irish Mike 
says to Red, ' You better hit the breeze,' 
but we ketched him — a telegraph pole 
was handy— I says, 'Have you got 
anything to say % ' ' You write to my 
mother and tell her that a horse fell on 
me. Don't tell her that I got hung,' 
Red says ; and we swung him." 

By the time he had thus proudly 
stretched out his three dead men before 
my imagination, in a setting of innumer- 
able shooting scraps and horse stealings, 




the hunters returned — my day with the 
multi-murderous cook was over — and 
nothing had happened. 

It is only fair to quote Nimrod's reply 
to one who criticised him for leaving 
me thus: 

" Humph ! Do you think I don't 
know those wild mountaineers ? They 
are perfectly chivalrous, and I could 
feel a great deal safer in leaving my 
wife in care of that desperado than with 
one of your Eastern dudes." 

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VII. 



AMONG THE CLOUDS. 



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VII. 

ANY a time as a child 
I used to lie on my 
back in the grass and 
stare far into the wide 
blue sky above. It 
seemed so soft, so ca- 
ressing, so far away, and yet so near. 
Then, perhaps, a tiny woolly cloud would 
drift across its face, meet another of its 
kind, then another and another, until 
the massed up curtain hid the playful 
blue, and amid grayness and chill, where 
all had been so bright, I would hurry 






under shelter to avoid the storm. That, 
outside of fairy books, an earthbound 
being could actually be in a cloud, was 
beyond my imagination. Indeed, it 
seems strange now, and were it not for 
the absence of a cherished quirt, I should 
be ready to think that my cloud experi- 
ence had been a dream. 

The day before, we had been in a 
great hurry to cross the Wind River 
Divide before a heavy snowfall made 
travel difficult, if not impossible. We 
had no wish to be snowbound for the 
winter in those wilds, with only two 
weeks' supply of food, and it was for 
this same reason we had not stopped to 
hunt that grizzly who had left a tourteen 
inch track over on Wiggins' Creek — 
the same being Wahb of the Big Horn 
Basin, about whom I shall have some- 
thing to say later. 



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We were now camped in a little val- 
ley whose creek bubbled pleasantly 
under the ice. Having cleared away 
three feet of snow for our tents, we de- 
cided to rest a day or two and hunt, as 
we were within two days' easy travel of 
the first ranch house. 

It was cold and snowy when Nimrod 
and I started out next morning to look 
for mountain sheep. I followed Nim- 
rod's horse for several miles as in a 
trance, the white flakes falling silently 
around me, and wondered how it would 
be possible for any human being to 
find his way back to camp ; but I had 
been taught my lesson, and kept silent. 

I even tried to make mental notes ot 
various rocks and trees we passed, but 
it was hopeless. They all looked alike 
to me. In a city, no matter how big or 
how strange, I can find home unerring- 




ly, and Nimrod is helpless as a babe. 
In the mountains it is different. When 
I finally raised my eyes from the horse's 
tail in front, it was because the tail and 
the horse belonging to it had stopped 
suddenly. 

We were in the middle of a brook. 
It is highly unpleasant to be stopped in 
the middle of an icy brook when your 
horse's feet break through the ice at each 
step, and you cannot be sure how deep 
the water is, nor how firm the bottom 
he is going to strike, especially as ice- 
covered brooks are Blondey's pet abhor- 
rence, and the uncertainty of my progress 
was emphasised by Blondey's attempts to 
cross on one or two feet instead of four. 

However, I looked dutifully in the 
direction Nimrod indicated and saw 
a long line of elk heads peering over 
the ridge in front and showing darkly 




against the snow. They were not 
startled. 

Those inquisitive heads, with ears 
alert, looked at us for some time, and 
then leisurely moved out of sight. We 
scrambled out of the stream and com- 
menced ascending the mountain after 
them. The damp snow packed on 
Blondey's hoofs, so that he was walking 
on snowballs. When these got about 
five inches high, they would drop off and 
begin again. It is needless to say that 
these varying snowballs did not help 
Blondey's sure-footedness, especially as 
the snow was just thick enough to con- 
ceal the treacherous slaty rocks beneath. 
For the first time I understood the 
phrase, to be * all balled up.' 

Between being ready to clear myself 
from the saddle and jump off on the up 
side, in case Blondey should fall, and 





keeping in sight of the tail of the other 
horse, I had given no attention to the 
landscape. 

Suddenly I lost Nimrod, and every- 
thing was swallowed up in a dark misty p 
vapour that cut me off from every object. ^ 
Even Blondey's nose and the ground at e 
my feet were blurred. Regardless of 
possibly near-by elk, I raised a frightened 
yell. My voice swirled around me and 
dropped. I tried again, but the sound 
would not carry. 

The icy vapour swept through me — 
a very lonely forlorn little being indeed. 
I just clung to the saddle, trusting to 
Blondey's instinct to follow the other 
animal, and tried to enjoy the fact that 
I was getting a new sensation. Even 
when one could see, every step was 
treacherous, but in that black fog I 
might as well have been blind and deaf. 



Then Blondey dislodged some loose 
rock, and went sliding down the moun- 
tain with it. There was not a thing I 
^ could do, so I shut my eyes for an 
J d instant. We brought up against a 
p boulder, fortunately, with no special 
i 8 damage — except to my nerves. Not 
being a man, I don't pretend to having 
enjoyed that experience — and there, 
not six feet away, was a ghostly figure 
that I knew must be Nimrod. 

He did not greet me as a long lost, 
for such I surely felt, but merely re- 
marked in a whisper : 

" We are in a cloud cap. It is set- 
tling down. The elk are over there. 
Keep close to me." And he started along 
the ridge. I felt it was so thoughtful of 
him to give me this admonition. I would 
much rather have been returned safely 
to camp without further injury and be- 



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fore I froze to the saddle ; but I grimly 
kept Blondey's nose overlapping his $ 
mate's back and said nothing — not even n* 
when I discovered that my cherished rid- ' J 
ingwhiphad left me. It probably was not p 
fifty feet away, on that toboggan slide, *p 
but it seemed quite hopeless to find any- 8 
thing in the freezing misty grayness that 
surrounded us. 

We continued our perilous passage. 
Then I was rewarded by a sight seldom 
accorded to humans. It was worth all 
the fatigue, cold, and bruises, for that 
appallingly illogical cloud cap took a 
new vagary. It split and lifted a little, 
and there, not three hundred yards away, 
in the twilight of that cold wet cloud, 
on that mountain in the sky, were two 
bull elk in deadly combat. Their far 
branching horns were locked together, 
and they swayed now this way, now 




NOT THREE HUNDRED YARDS AWAY . . . WERE TWO BULL ELK 
IN DEADLY COMBAT. 



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that, as they wrestled for the supremacy 
m of the herd of does, which doubtless 
n was not far away. We could not see 
jn clearly : all was as in a dream. There 
d was not a sound, only the blurred 
p outlines through the blank mist of two 
o mighty creatures struggling for victory. 
One brief glimpse of this mountain 
drama ; then they sank out of sight, and 
the numbing grayness and darkness once 
more closed around us. 

On the way back to camp, Blondey 
shied at a heap of decaying bones that 
were still attached to a magnificent pair 
of antlers. They were at the foot of a 
cliff, over which the animal had prob- 
ably fallen. The gruesome sight was 
suggestive of the end of one of those 
shadowy creatures, fighting back there 
high up on the mountain in the mist 
and the darkness. 




We saw no mountain sheep, but oh, 
the joy of our camp fire that night ! 
For we got back in due time all right 
— Nimrod and the gods know how. 
To feel the cheery dancing warmth 
from the pine needles driving away 
cold and misery was pure bliss. One 
thing is certain about roughing it for 
a woman: — there is no compromise. 
She either sits in the lap of happiness 
or of misery. The two are side by side, 
and toss her about a dozen times a day 

but happiness never lets her go for 
long. 




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VIII. 
AT YEDDAR'S. 

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VIII. 




IFE at Yeddar's ranch 
on Green River, where 
Nimrod and I left the 
pack train, is different 
from life in New York; 
likewise the people are 
different. And as every Woman-who- 
goes-hunting-with-her-husband is sure 
to go through a Yeddar experience, I 
offer a few observations by way of en- 
lightenment before telling how I killed 
my antelope. (If you wish to be 
proper, always use the possessive for 
animals you have killed. It is a Wes- 
tern abbreviation in great favour.) 




A two-story log house, a one-room 
log office, a log barn, and, across the 
creek, the log shack we occupied, fifty 
miles from the railroad, and no end of 
miles from anything else, but wilderness 
— that was Yeddar's. 

Old Yeddar — Uncle John, the 
guides and trappers and teamsters 
called him — had solved the problem 
of ideal existence. He ran this rough 
road house without any personal ex- 
penditure of labour or money. He sold 
whisky in his office to the passing 
teamsters and guides, and relied upon 
the same to do the chores around the 
place, for which he gave them grub, 
the money for which came from the 
occasional summer tourist, such as we. 

Mrs. Spiker ' did ' for him in the 
summer for her board and that of her 
little girl, and in the winter he and a 





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pard or two rustled for themselves, 
on bacon, coffee, and that delectable 
compound of bread and water known 
as camp sinkers. He got some money 
for letting the horses from two East- 
ern outfits run over the surrounding 
country and eat up the Wyoming gov- 
ernment hay. Thus he loafs on through 
the years, outside or inside his office, 
without a care beyond the getting of 
his whisky and his tobacco. Of course 
he has a history. He claims to be 
from a ' high up ' Southern family, 
but has been a plainsman since 1851. 
He has lived among the Indians, has 
several red-skinned children somewhere 
on this planet, and seems to have 
known all the wild tribe of stage driv- 
ers, miners, and frontiersmen with rapid- 
firing histories. 

Once a week, if the weather were 






fine, Uncle John would tie a towel and 
a clean shirt to his saddle, throw one 
leg across the back of Jim, his cow 
pony, blind in one eye and weighted 
with years unknown, and the two would 
jog a mile or so back in the moun- 
tains, to a hot sulphur spring, where 
Yeddar would perform his weekly toilet. 
He was not known to take off his 
clothes at any other time, and if the 
weather were disagreeable the pilgrim- 
age was omitted. 

The cheapest thing at Yeddar's, ex- 
cept time, was advice. You could not 
tie up a dog without the entire estab- 
lishment of loafers bossing the job. A 
little active co-operation was not so easy 
to get, however. One day I watched 
a freighter get stuck in the mud down 
the road l a piece.' One by one, the 
whole number of freighters, moun- 






/t 



i 




taineers and guides then at Yeddar's 
lounged to the place, until there were 
nine able-bodied men ranged in a row 
watching the freighter dig out his 
wagon. No one offered to help him, 
but all contented themselves with crit- 
icising his methods freely and inquir- 
ing after his politics. 

During the third week of our stay, 
Uncle John raised the price of our 
board — and such board ! — giving as an 
excuse that when we came he did not 
know that we were going to like it so 
well, or stay so long ! Please place 
this joke where it belongs. 

The charm that held us to this rough 
place was the abundance of game. The 
very night we got there, I was standing 
quietly by the cabin door at dusk, when 
down the path came two of the prettiest 
does that the whole of the Blacktail 



tribe could muster. Shoulder to shoul- 
der, with their big ears alert, they picked 
their way along, and under cover of the 
deepening twilight advanced to exam- 
ine the dwelling of the white man. 

I watched them with silent breath. 
They were not ten yards away. Then 
they saw me and, wheeling around, 
stopped, the boldest a little in advance 
of her companion, with the right fore- 
foot raised for action. I made no move. 
The graceful things eyed me suspi- 
ciously for several seconds and then 
advanced a little in a one-sided fashion. 

A laugh from Yeddar's office, across 
the creek, where Uncle John and Dave 
were having a quiet game of pinochle, 
caused a short retreat up the road. 
About fifty yards away, they stopped, 
and there, in the twilight, in that wild 
glen, they put themselves through a 





DOWN THE PATH CAME TWO OF THE PRETTIEST BLACKTAILS. 



A 



series of poses so graceful, so unstudied, 
so tender, so deer-like, that my heart 
was thrilled with joy at the mere artistic 
beauty of the scene. Then the loud- 
mouthed alarm of a dog sent them 
silently into the forest gloom. 

Nimrod wanted some photographs of 
animals from life, and the energy which 
we put forth to obtain these was a con- 
stant surprise and disturbance to Uncle 
John and his co-loafers. They could 
understand why one might trap an ani- 
mal, but to let it go again unhurt, after 
spending hours over it with a camera, 
was a problem that required many 
drinks and much quiet cogitation in 
the shade of the office. 

For days we tried to get a wood- 
chuck. At last we succeeded, and I 
find this note written in my journal for 
that date : — 



"Oct. 15th: Nimrod caught a wood- 
chuck to-day, a baby one, and we called 
him Johnny. Johnny stayed with us 
all day in his cage, while Nimrod made 
a sketch of him and I took his picture. 
Then, in the late afternoon, we took 
him back to his home in the stone-clad 
hill, and put him among his brothers 
and sisters, who peeped cautiously at us 
from various rocky niches, higher up 
the hill. 

Little Johnny must have had a great 
deal to say of the strange ways and food 
of the big white animal. It must have 
been hard, too, for him to have found 
suitable woodchuck language to express 
his sensations when he was carried, oh ! 
such a long way, in a big sack that grew 
on the side of his captor; and of the 
taste of peppermint candy, which he ate 
in his prettiest style, sitting on his 




haunches and clutching the morsel in 
both forepaws like any well-bred baby 
woodchuck. And then those delicious 
sugar cookies that Mrs. Spiker had just 
baked ! How could he make his igno- 
rant brother chuckies appreciate those 
cookies ! Poor little Johnny is a marked 
woodchuck. He has seen the world." 



When Nimrod went hunting skunks, 
the group at the office gave us up. 
" Locoed, plumb locoed," was the ver- 
dict. 

Mnwo y OU ever been on a skunk 
ut perhaps you have no preju- 
] had. My code of action for a 
s, if you see a black and white 
animal, don't stop to admire its beau- 
tiful bushy tail, but give a good imita- 
tion of a young woman running for her 
life. 



This did not suit Nimrod. He as- 
sured me that there was no danger if 
we treated his skunkship respectfully, 
and, as I was the photographer, I put on 
my old clothes and meekly fell in line. 
Nimrod set several box traps in places 
where skunks had been. These traps 
were merely soap boxes raised at one 
end by a figure four arrangement of 
sticks, so that when the animal goes in- 
side and touches the bait the sticks fall 
apart, down comes the box, and the an- 
imal is caged unhurt. The next morn- 
ing we went the rounds. The first trap 
was unsprung. The second one was 
down. Of course we could not see in- 
side. Was it empty? Was the occu- 
pant a rat or a skunk, and if so, what 
was he going to do? 

Nimrod approached the trap. Just 
then a big tree chanced to get between 



A 





me and it. I stopped, thinking that as 
good a place as any to await develop- 
ments. 

" It's a skunk all right," Nimrod an- 
nounced gleefully. 

The box was rather heavy, so Nim- 
rod went to Yeddar's, which was not far 
away, to see if he could get one of the 
loungers to help carry the captive to a 
large wire cage that we had rigged up 
near our shack. 

There were six men near the office, 
bronzed mountaineers, men of guns and 
grit, men who had spent their lives 
facing danger; but, when it came to fac- 
ing a skunk, each looked at Nimrod 
as one would at a crazy man and had 
important business elsewhere. For once 
I thoroughly appreciated their point of 
view, but as there was no one else I 
took one end of the box, and we started. 





It was a precarious pilgrimage, but we 
moved gently and managed not to out- 
rage the little animal's feelings. 

When the men saw us coming 
across the creek, with one accord they 
all went in and took a drink. 

We gingerly urged Mr. Skunk into 
the big cage, and with the greatest cau- 
tion, never making a sudden move, I 
took his picture. All was as merry as a 
marriage bell, and might have continued 
so but for that puppy Sim. That is the 
trouble with skunks; they will lose 
their manners if startled, and dogs startle 
skunks. 

Of course the puppy barked; of 
course the skunk did not like it. He 
ruffled up his cold black nose, and ele- 
vated his bushy tail — his beautiful, 
plumy tail. I opened the door of his 
cage and, snatching the puppy, fled. 




The skunk was a wise and good ani- 
mal, really a gentleman, if treated 
politely. He appreciated my efforts on 
his behalf. He forbearingly lowered 
his tail, composed his fur, and walked 
out of the cage and into the near-by 
woods as tamely as a house tabby out 
for a stroll. 




f\ 



IX. 

MY ANTELOPE. 

5: 






T was a week later when 
I did something which 
those old guides could 
understand and appre- 
ciate — I made a dead 
shot. I committed a 
murder, and from that time, the brother- 
hood of pards was open to us, had we 
cared to join. It was all because I 
killed an antelope. 

Nimrod and I started out that morn- 
ing with the understanding that, if we 
saw antelope, I was to have a chance. 

In about six miles, Nimrod spied two 
white specks moving along the rocky 



ridge to the east of us, which rose ab- 
ruptly from the plain where we were. 
I was soon able to make out that they 
were antelope. But the antelope had 
also seen us, and there was as much 
chance of getting near to them, by di- 
rect pursuit, as of a snail catching a 
hare. So we rode on calmly northward 
for half a mile, making believe we had 
not seen them, until we passed out of 
sight behind a long hill. Then we be- 
gan an elaborate detour up the moun- 
tain, keeping well out of sight, until we 
judged that the animals, providing 
they had not moved, were below us, 
under the rocky ledge nearly a mile 
back. 

We tied up the horses on that dizzy 
height, and stole, Nimrod with a car- 
bine, I with the rifle, along a treacherous, 
shaly bank which ended, twenty feet 



♦ 




A MISSTEP WOULD HAVE SENT US FLYING 
OVER THE CLIFF. 




below, in the steep rocky bluffs that 
formed the face of the cliff. Every step 
was an agony of uncertainty as to how 
far one would slide, and how much 
loose shale one would dislodge to rattle 
down over the cliff and startle the ante- 
lope we hoped were there. To move 
about on a squeaking floor without dis- 
turbing a light sleeper is child's play 
compared with our progress. A mis- 
step would have sent us flying over the 
cliff, but I did not think of that — my 
only care was not to startle the shy 
fleet-footed creatures we were pursuing. 
I hardly dared to breathe ; every muscle 
and nerve was tense with the long sus- 
pense. 

Suddenly I clutched Nimrod's arm 
and pointed at an oblong tan coloured 
bulk fifty yards above us on the moun- 
tain. 




" Antelope ! Lying down ! " I whis- 
pered in his ear. He nodded and mo- 
tioned me to go ahead. I crawled 
nearer, inch by inch, my gaze riveted 
on that object. It did not move. I Q 
grew more elated the nearer it allowed p 
me to approach. It was not so very o 
hard to get at an antelope, after all. 
I felt astonishingly pleased with my 
performance. Then — rattle, crash — 
and a stone went bounding down. 
What a pity, after all my painful con- 
tortions not to do it ! I instantly raised 
the rifle to get a shot before the swift 
animal went flying away. 

But it was strangely quiet. I stole 
a little nearer — and then turned and 
went gently back to Nimrod. He was 
convulsed with silent and unnecessary 
laughter. My elaborate stalk, had been 
made on — a nice buff stone. 




We continued our precarious jour- 
ney for another quarter of a mile, when 
I motioned that I was going to try to 
get a sight of the antelope, which, ac- 
cording to my notion, were under the 
rock some hundred feet below, and 
signed to Nimrod to stay behind. 

Surely my guardian angel attended 
that descent. I slid down a crack, in 
the rock three feet wide, which gave 
me a purchase on the sides with my 
elbows and left hand. The right hand 
grasped the rifle, to my notion an 
abominably heavy awkward thing. 
One of these drops was eight feet, 
another twelve. A slip would probably 
have cost me my life. Then I crawled 
along a narrow ledge for about the 
width of a town-house front, and, mak- 
ing another perilous slide, landed on 
a ledge so close to the creatures I was 






hunting that I was as much startled as 
they. 

Away those two beautiful animals 
bounded, their necks proudly arched 
and their tiny feet hitting the only safe 
places with unerring aim. They were 
far out of range before I thought to 
get my rifle in position, and my ran- 
dom shot only sent them farther out on 
the plain, like drifting leaves on autumn 
wind. 

It was impossible to return the way 
I had come; so I rolled and jumped 
and generally tumbled to the grassy hill 
below, and waited for Nimrod to go 
back along the shaly stretch, and bring 
down the horses the way they had gone 

up- 
Then we took some lunch from the 

saddle bags and sat down in the wav- 
ing, yellow grass of the foot hill with a 






fi 



S 

T 




sweep of miles before us, miles of grassy 
tableland shimmering in the clear air 
like cloth of gold in the sun, where 
cattle grow fat and the wild things still 
are at home. 

During lunch Nimrod tried to con- 
vince me that he knew all the time that 
the antelope I stalked on the mountain- 
side was a stone. Of course wives 
should believe their husbands. The 
economy of State and Church would 
collapse otherwise. However, the ap- 
pearance of a large band of antelope, 
a sight now very rare even in the Rock- 
ies, caused the profitless discussion to 
be engulfed in the pursuit of the real 
thing. 

The antelope were two miles away, 
mere specks of white. We could not 
tell them from the twinkling plain until 
they moved. We mounted immedi- 



w\\ 



ately and went after those antelope — by- 
pretending to go away from them. For mj 
three hours, we drew nearer to the quietly n 
browsing animals. We hid behind low 'I 
hills, and crawled down a water-course, p 
and finally dismounted behind the very p 
mound of prairie on the other side of § 
which they were resting, a happy, 
peaceful family. There were twenty 
does, and proudly in their midst moved 
the king of the harem, a powerful buck 
with royal horns. 

The crowning point of my long day's 
hunt was before me. That I should 
have my chance to get one of the finest 
bucks ever hunted was clear. What 
should I do, should I hit or miss? 
Fail ! What a thought — never ! 

Just then a drumming of hoofs 
which rapidly faded away showed that 
the wind had betrayed us, and the 




whole band was off like a flight of 
arrows. 

"Shoot! Shoot!" cried Nimrod, 
but my gun was already up and levelled 
on the flying buck — now nearly a hun- 
dred yards away. 

Bang ! The deadly thing went forth 
to do its work. Sliding another car- 
tridge into the chamber, I held ready 
for another shot. 

There was no need. The fleet-footed 
monarch's reign was over, and already 
he had gone to his happy hunting 
ground. The bullet had gone straight 
to his heart, and he had not suffered. 
But the does, the twenty beating hearts 
of his harem ! There they were, not 
one hundred yards away, huddled to- 
gether with ears erect, tiny feet alert 
for the next bound — yet waiting for 
their lord and master, the proud tyrant, 




« f 



so strangely still on the ground. Why 
did he not come 1 ? And those two crea- 
tures whose smell they feared — why did 
he stay so near*? 

They took a few steps nearer and 
again waited, eyes and ears and uplift- 
ed hoofs asking the question, " Why 
doesn't he come*? Why does he let 
those dreadful creatures go so close? " 
Then, as we bent over their fallen hero, 
they knew he was forever lost to them, 
and fear sent them speeding out of sight. 



~f\ 




X. 



A MOUNTAIN DRAMA. 





UT hunting does not 
make one wholly a 
brute, crying, ' Kill, 
kill ! ' at every chance. 
In fact I have no more 
to confess in that line. 
Another side to it is shown by an in- 
cident that happened about a week later. 
We were riding leisurely along, a mile 
or so from the spot where my antelope 
had yielded his life to my vanity, when 
we saw, several miles away in the low 
hills, two moving flecks of white which 
might mean antelope. 




We watched. The two spots came 
rapidly nearer, and were clearly ante- 
lope. We were soon able to make out 
that one was being chased by the other; 
then that they were both bucks, the 
one in the rear much the heavier and 
evidently the aggressor. Then from 
behind a hill came the cause of it all — 
a bunch of lady antelope, who kept 
modestly together and to one side, and 
watched the contest that should decide 
their master. Surely this unclaimed 
harem was my doing ! 

All at once, the two on-coming figures 
saw us. The first one paused, doubtful 
which of the two dangers to choose. 
His foe caught up with him. He 
wheeled and charged in self-defence, 
their horns met with a crash, and the 
smaller was thrown to the ground. He 
was clearly no match for his opponent. 

He sprang to his feet. His only 




safety was in flight, but where? His 
strength was nearly gone. He ran a 
short distance away from us, circling 
our cavalcade. His foe was nearly up 
to him again. He stopped an instant 
with uplifted foot, then turned and 
made directly for vs. Three loaded 
guns hung at our saddles, but no hand 
went towards them. Not thirty feet 
away from our motionless horses the 
buck dropped, exhausted. We could 
easily have lassoed him. His adversary 
kept beyond gunshot, not daring to fol- 
low him into the power of an enemy all 
wild things fear; and an eagle who had 
perched on a rock near by, in hopes of 
a coming feast, flapped his wings and 
slowly flew away to search elsewhere for 
his dinner. The conquering buck walked 
back to his spoils of war, and soon mar- 
shalled them out of sight behind a hill. 
The young buck almost at our feet 





quickly recovered. He was not seri- 
ously hurt, only frightened and winded. 
He rose to his feet and stood for an in- 
stant looking directly at us, his head 
with its growing horns held high in the p 
air, as if to thank us for the protection p 
from a lesser foe he had so boldly asked § 
and so freely received of an all power- 
ful enemy. Then, turning, he lightly 
sped over the plain in an opposite direc- 
tion, and the eagle, who had kept us in 
sight until now, perhaps with a linger- 
ing hope, rose swiftly upwards and was 
lost to sight. 

One elk with an eleven-point crown, 
and one antelope, of the finest ever 
brought down, is the tax I levied on 
the wild things. Of the many, many 
times I have watched them and left 
them unmolested, and of the lessons they 
have taught me, under Nimrod's gui- 



|7w dance, I have not space to tell, for the 
real fascination of hunting is not in the 
killing but in seeing the creature at 
home amid his glorious surroundings, 
and feeling the freely rushing blood, the 
health-giving air, the gleeful sense of 
joy and life in nature, both within and 
without. 



N 

N 
D 
E 
R 
F 
O 
O 
T 





XI 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT 

WAHB OF THE BIGHORN 

BASIN. 





XL 

FOURTEEN- INCH 

track is big, even for a 
grizzly. That was the 
size of Wahb's. The 
first time I saw it, the 
hole looked bigenough 
for a baby's bath tub. 

We were travelling in Mr. A.'s pack 
train across the Shoshones from Idaho 
to Wyoming. It was the first of Octo- 
ber, and by then, in that region, winter 
is shaking hands with you — pleasant 
hands to be sure, but a bit cool. The 
night before we had made a picturesque 




camp on the lee side of a rock cliff 
which was honeycombed with caves. A 
blazing camp fire was built at the mouth 
of one of these and we lounged on the 
rock ledges inside, thoroughly protected 
from the wind and cold. A storm was 
brewing. We could hear the pine trees 
whistle and shriek as they were lashed 
about in the forest across the brook. 
The lurid light of the fire showed us 
ourselves in distorted shadows. The 
whole place seemed wild and wicked, 
like a robber camp, and under its spell 
one thought things and felt things thaf 
would have been impossible in the sun 
shine, where everything is revealed. It 
began to snow, but we laughed at that. 
What did it matter in the shelter of the 
cave ? For the first time in days I was 
thoroughly toasted on all sides at once. 
We had changed abruptly from the 





steam-heated Pullman to camping in 
snow, and it takes a few days to get 
used to such a shock. We told tales as 
weird as the scene, until far into the 
night. The next morning the sun was 
bright, but the cook had to cut a hole 
in the ice blanket over the brook to 
get water. We dared not linger at our 
robber camp, for at any time a big snow- 
storm might come that would cover 
the Wind River Divide, which we had 
to cross, with snow too deep for the 
horses to travel. 

Two days later, the weather still 
promising well, we decided to camp for 
a few days on the Upper Wiggin's 
Fork to hunt. It was a lovely spot; 
one of those little grassy parks which 
but for the uprising masses of mountains 
and towering trees might have sur- 
rounded your country home. 





That first night as we sat around the 
camp fire there came out of the black- 
ness behind us a faint greeting — 
Wheres Who — Where s Who — from a 
denizen of this mountain park, the 
great horned owl. The next morning 
we packed biscuits into our saddle-bags 
and separated for the day into two par- 
ties, Nimrod and the Horsewrangler, 
the Host and myself, leaving the 
Cook to take care of camp. We were 
hunting for elk, mountain lion, or 
bear. Nimrod had his camera, as well 
as his gun, a combination which the 
Horsewrangler eyed with scant toler- 
ance. 

The Host led me down the Wiggin's 
Fork for two miles, when we came out 
upon a sandy, pebbly stretch which 
in spring the torrents entirely covered, 
but now had been dried up for 




3 

T 



months. I was following mechanically, 
guiding Blondey's feet among the 
cobblestones, for nature had paved the 
place very badly, without much thought 
for anything beyond the pleasure of 
being alive, when the Host suddenly 
stopped and pointed to the ground. 
There I made out the track of a huge 
bear going the way we were, and be- 
yond was another, and another. Then 
they disappeared like a row of post- 
holes into the distance. The Host said 
there was only one bear in that region 
that could make a track like that; in 
spite of the fact that this was beyond 
his range, it must be Meeteetsee Wahb. 
He got off his horse and measured the 
track Yes, the hind foot tracked four- 
teen inches. What a hole in the ground 
it looked ! 

The Host said the maker of it was 





probably far away, as he judged the 
track to be several weeks old. I had 
heard so many tales of this monster 
that when I gazed upon his track I felt 
as though I were looking at the auto- 
graph of a hero. 

We saw other smaller grizzly and 
black bear tracks that day, so it was 
decided to set a bear bait. Our Host 
was a cattle king, and could wage war 
on bears with a good conscience. The 
usual three-cornered affair of logs was 
fixed, the trap in the centre and elk 
meat as a decoy. Horse meat is more 
alluring, but we deemed we would not 
need that, since we had with us "a 
never-failing bear charm." Its object 
was to suggest a lady bear, and thus 
attract some gallant to her side. The 
secret of the preparation of this charm 
had been confided to Nimrod by an old 






A 




hunter the year before. It was a liquid 
composed of rancid fish oil, and — but 
I suppose I must not tell. A more un- 
godly odour I have never known. Nim- 
rod put a few drops of it on his horse's 
feet, and all the other horses straightway 
ostracised him for several days till the 
worst of it wore away. Even the cook 
allowed " it was all-fired nasty." So 
some of this bear charm went on the 
bait. 

The next morning, as we started out 
for the day to roam the mountains, we 
first inspected the bear pen. Nothing 
had been near it. Indeed that charm 
would keep everything else away, if not 
the bear himself. 

The next day it was the same story, 
but this really was no argument for or 
against the charm, because, as I was told, 
bears in feeding usually make about a 




two weeks' circuit, and although we 
had seen many tracks they were all stale, 
demonstrating in a rough way that if N 
we could linger for a week or two we ^1 
would be sure to catch some one of the p 
trackers on the return trip. p 

This we could not do, as the expected § 
snow-storm was now threatening, and 
we were still two days from the Divide. 
To be snowed up there would be serious. 
Before we could get packed up the snow 
began, falling steadily and quietly as 
though reserving its forces for later vio- 
lence. We had been travelling about 
an hour from where we broke camp, 
when Nimrod beckoned me to join 
him where he had halted with the 
Horsewrangler a little off the line the 
pack train was following. I rode up 
quietly, thinking it might be game. 
But no; Horsewrangler pointed to a 




little bank where there was a circular 
opening in the trees. I looked, but did 
not understand. 

" Do you see that dip in the ground 
there where the snow melts as fast as it 
drops'?" 

" Yes." 

" Wal, that there's a bear bath." 

" A bear's bath ! " I exclaimed, sus- 
pecting a hoax. 

"Yes, a sulphur spring. I reckon 
this here one belongs to the Big 
Grizzly." 

We examined the place with much 
interest, but found no fresh tracks, and 
the snow had covered most of the stale 
ones, as " of course he ain't got no call 
for it in winter. Like as not, he's denned 
up somewheres near, though it's a mite 
early." 

This was thrilling. Perhaps we 




might pass within a few feet of Wahb 
and never know it. It was like being 
told that the ghost of the dear departed 
is watching you. Nimrod pointed out 
to me a tree with the bark scratched 
and torn off for several feet — one of 
Wahb's rubbing trees. He located the 
sunning ledge for me, and then we re- 
luctantly hurried on, for the journey 
ahead promised to be long and hard. 
Indeed I found it so. 

There were many indications that the 
storm was a serious one, and not the 
least of these was the behaviour of the 
little chief hare, or pika. As we as- 
cended the rocky mountain-side we saw 
many of these little creatures scurrying 
hither and thither with bundles of hay 
in their mouths, which they deposited 
in tiny hay-cocks in sheltered places 
under rocks. So hard were they work- 




A 



ing that they could not even stop to be 
afraid of us. As all the party, but my- 
self, knew, this meant bad weather and 
winter; for these cute, overgrown rats 
are reliable barometers, and they gave 
every indication that they were belated 
in getting their food supply, which had 
been garnered in the autumn after the 
manner of their kind, properly housed 
for winter use. 

All that day we worked our way 
through the forest with the silent snow 
deepening around us, ever up and up, 
eight thousand, nine thousand, ten thou- 
sand feet. It was an endless day 01 
freezing in the saddle, and of snow 
showers in one's face from the overladen 
branches. I was frightfully cold and 
miserable. Every minute seemed the 
last I could endure without screeching. 
But still our Host pushed on. It was 





necessary to get near enough to the top 
of the Continental Divide so that we $ jj 
could cross it the next day. It began w 
to grow dark about three o'clock ; the 'I 
storm increased. I kept saying over p 
and over to myself what I was deter- p 
mined I should not say out loud: § 

" Oh, please stop and make camp ! 
I cannot stay in this saddle another 
minute. My left foot is frozen. I 
know it is, and the saddle cramp is un- 
bearable. I am so hungry, so cold, so 
exhausted ; oh, please stop ! " Then, 
having wailed this out under my breath, 
I would answer it harshly : " You 
little fool, stop your whimpering. The 
others are made of flesh and blood 
too. We should be snowbound if we 
stopped here. Don't be a cry-baby. 
There is lots of good stuff in you yet. 
This only seems terrible because you 
are not used to it, so brace up." 




THUS I FOUGHT THROUGH THE AFTERNOON. 




Then 1 would even smile at Nimrod 
who kept keen watch on me, or wave 
my hand at the Host, who was in front. 
This appearance of unconcern helped 
me for a few seconds, and then I would 
begin the weary round : " Oh, my foot, 
my back, my head ; I cannot endure it 
another moment ; I can't, I can't." Yet 
all the while knowing that I could and 
would. Thus I fought through the 
afternoon, and at last became just a 
numb thing on the horse with but one 
thought, " I can and will do it." So at 
last when the order came to camp in 
four feet of snow ten thousand feet 
above the sea, with the wind and snow 
blowing a high gale, I just drew rein 
and sat there on my tired beast. 

We disturbed a band of mountain 
sheep that got over the deep snow with 
incredible swiftness. It was my first 
view of these animals, but it aroused no 



enthusiasm in me, only a vague wonder 
that they seemed to be enjoying them- 
selves. Finally Nimrod came and pulled 
me off, I was too stiff and numb to get 
down myself. Then I found that the 
snow was so deep I could not go four 
feet. Not to be able to move about 
seemed to me the end of all things. I 
simply dropped in the snow — it was 
impossible to ever be warm and happy 
again — and prepared at last to weep. 

But I looked around first — Nimrod 
was coaxing a pack animal through the 
snow to a comparatively level place 
where our tent and bed things could 
be placed. The Host was shovelling 
a pathway between me and the spot 
where the Cook was coaxing a fire. The 
Horse wrangler was unpacking the horses 
alone (so that I might have a fire the 
sooner\ They were all grim — doubtless 




as weary as I — but they were all working 
for my ultimate comfort, while I was 
about to repay them by sitting in the 
snow and weeping. I pictured them in 
four separate heaps in the snow, all 
weeping. This was too much ; I did 
not weep. Instead by great effort I 
managed to get my horse near the fire, 
and after thawing out a moment unsad- 
dled the tired animal, who galloped off 
gladly to join his comrades, and thus I 
became once more a unit in the eco- 
nomic force. 

But bad luck, had crossed its fingers 
at me that day without doubt, and I 
had to be taught another lesson. I tell 
of it briefly as a warning to other 
women ; of course men always know 
better, instinctively, as they know how 
to fight. I presume you will agree that 
ignorance is punished more cruelly than 




any other thing, and that in most cases 
good intentions do not lighten the 
offence. My ignorance that time was 
of the effect of eating snow on an empty 
stomach. My intentions were of the 
best, for, being thirsty, I ate several 
handfuls of snow in order to save the 
cook from getting water out of a brook 
that was frozen. But my punishment 
was the same — a severe chill which 
made me very ill. 

I had been cold all day, but that is a 
very different thing from having a chill. 
I felt stuffed with snow ; snow water ran 
in my veins, snow covered the earth, the 
peaks around me. I was mad with 
snow. They gave me snow whisky 
and put me beside a snow fire. I had 
not told any one what I had done, not 
realising what was the mischief maker, 
and it really looked as though I had 
heart disease, or something dreadful. 






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mmMmm JOl. 



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They put rugs and coats around me 
till I could not move with their weight ; 
but they were putting them around a 
snow woman. The only thing I felt 
was the icy wind, and that went through 
my shivering, shaking self. The snow 
was falling quietly and steadily, as it had 
fallen all day. We must cross yonder 
divide to-morrow. It was no time to 
be ill. Every one felt that, and big, 
black gloom was settling over the camp, 
when I by way of being cheerful re- 
marked to the Host: "Do you-ou 
kno-ow, I feel as though there was 
n-nothing of me b-but the sno-ow I ate 
an hour ago." 

" Snow ! " he exclaimed. " Did you 
eat much ? Well, no wonder you are 
ill." 

The effect was instantaneous. Every- 
body looked relieved ; I was not even a 
heroine. 



" I will soon cure you," said the Host, 
as he poured out more whisky, and the 
Cook reheated some soup and chocolate. 
The hot drinks soon succeeded in thaw- 
ing me from a snow woman back to 
shivering flesh and blood which was 
supportable. 

Nimrod looked pleasant again and 
began studying the mountain sheep 
tracks. The cook fell to whistling 
softly from one side of his mouth, while 
a cigarette dangled from the other, as 
was his wont when he puttered about 
the fire. The Horsewrangler was mak- 
ing everything tight for the night 
against wind and snow. The Host 
lighted a cigarette, a calm expression 
glided over his face, and he became 
chatty, and, although the storm was just 
as fierce and the thermometer just as 
low, peace was restored to Camp Snow. 





The next day we crossed the divide, 
and not a day too soon. The snow was 
so deep that the trail breaker in front 
J was in danger of going over a precipice 
p or into a rock crevice at any time. 
P After him came the pack animals, so 
o that they could make a path for us. 
The path was just the width of the 
horse, and in some places the walls of it 
rose above my head. In such places I 
had to keep my feet high up in the 
saddle to prevent them from being 
crushed. For a half day we struggled 
upwards with danger stalking by our 
si'des, then on the very ridge of the 
divide itself, 11,500 feet in the air, with 
the icy wind blowing a hurricane of 
blinding snow, we skirted along a preci- 
pice the edge of which the snow cov- 
ered so that we could not be sure when 
a misstep might send us over into 




whatever is waiting for us in the next 
world. 

But fortunately we did not even lose a 
horse. Then came the plunging down, 
down, with no chance to pick steps 
because of the all-concealing snow. 
Those, indeed, were " stirring times," 
but we made camp that night in clear 
weather and good spirits. We were on 
the right side of the barrier and only- 
two days from the Palette Ranch — and 
safety, not to say luxury. 

If you had Aladdin's lamp and asked 
for a shooting box, you could hardly 
expect to find anything more ideal than 
the Palette Ranch. There is no spot 
in the world more beautiful or more 
health giving. It is tucked away by 
itself in the heart of the Rockies, 150 
miles from the railroad, 40 miles from 
the stage route, and surrounded on the 




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three sides by a wilderness of moun- 
tains. And when after travelling over 
these for three weeks with compass as 
guide, one dark, stormy night we stum- 
bled and slipped down a mountain side 
and across an icy brook to its front 
lawn, the message of good cheer that 
streamed in rosy light from its windows 
seemed like an opiate dream. 

We entered a large living room, hung 
with tapestries and hunting trophies 
where a perfectly appointed table was 
set opposite a huge stone fireplace, 
blazing with logs. Then came a deli- 
cious course dinner with rare wines, and 
served by a French chef. The surprise 
and delight of it in that wilderness — 
but the crowning delight was the guest- 
room. As we entered, it was a wealth 
of colour in Japanese effect, soft glowing 
lanterns, polished floors, fur rugs, silk- 




£>-zi 



( > i/Or 



*to 







furnished beds and a crystal mantel- 
piece (brought from Japan) which re- 
flected the fire-light in a hundred tints. 
Beyond, through an open door, could be 
seen the tiled bath-room. It was a room B 
that would be charming anywhere, but p 
in that region a veritable fairy's cham- § 
ber. Truly it is a canny Host who 
can thus blend harmoniously the human 
luxuries of the East and the natural 
glories of the West. 

In our rides around the Palette I saw 
Wahb's tracks once again. The Host 
had taken us to a far away part of 
his possessions. Three beautiful wolf 
hounds frisked along beside us, when 
all at once they became much excited 
about something they smelt in a little 
scrub-pine clump on the right. We 
looked about for some track or sign 



that would explain their behaviour. I 

m spied a huge bear track. 

w " Hah ! " I thought, " Wahb at last," 

Jn and my heart went pit-a-pat as I pointed 

d it out to Nimrod. He recognised it 

P but remained far too calm for my fancy. 

o I pointed into the bushes with signs of 

" Hurrah, it's Wahb." I received in 

reply a shake of the head and a pitying 

smile. How was I to know that the 

dogs were saying as plainly as dogs 

need to " A bobcat treed " *? 

So I followed meekly and soon saw 
the bobcat's eyes glaring at us from the 
topmost branches. The Host took a 
shot at it with the camera which the 
lynx did not seem to mind, and calling 
off the disappointed dogs we went on 
our way. The Host allows no shoot- 
ing within a radius of twelve miles of the 





Palette. Any living thing can find 
protection there and the result is that 
any time you choose to ride forth you 
can see perfectly wild game in their 
homeland. 

It was not till the next year that I 
really saw Wahb. It was at his sum- 
mer haunt, the Fountain Hotel in the 
Yellowstone National Park. If you 
were to ask Nimrod to describe the 
Fountain geyser or Hell Hole, or any 
of the other tourist sights thereabouts, 
I am sure he would shake his head and 
tell you there was nothing but bears 
around the hotel. For this was the 
occasion when Nimrod spent the entire 
day in the garbage heap watching the 
bears, while I did the conventional 
thing and saw the sights. 

About sunset I got back to the hotel. 



I 



A 




Much to my surprise I could not find 
Nimrod ; and neither had he been seen 
since morning, when he had started in 
the direction of the garbage heap in the 
woods some quarter of a mile back 
from the hotel. Anxiously I hurried 
there, but could see no Nimrod. In- 
stead I saw the outline of a Grizzly 
feeding quietly on the hillside. It was 
very lonely and gruesome. Under 
other circumstances I certainly would 
have departed quickly the way I came, 
but now I must find Nimrod. It was 
growing dark, and the bear looked a 
shocking size, as big as a whale. Dear 
me, perhaps Nimrod was inside — Jonah 
style. Just then I heard a sepulchral 
whisper from the earth. 

" Keep quiet, don't move, it's the 
Big Grizzly." 

I looked about for the owner of the 



W> 



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whisper and discovered Nimrod not far 

away in a nest he had made for himself 

in a pile of rubbish. I edged nearer. n 

" See, over there in the woods are 'I 

two black bears. You scared them d 

away. Isn't he a monster?" indicating ^ 

Wahb. §. 

T 

I responded with appropriate enthu- 
siasm. Then after a respectful silence I 
ventured to say : 

" How long have you been here ? " 

" All day — and such a day — thir- 
teen bears at one time. It is worth all 
your geysers rolled into one. 

" H'm — Have you had anything to 
eat ? " 

" No." Another silence, then I began 
again. 

"Arn't you hungry? Don't you 
want to come to dinner?" 

He nodded yes. Then I sneaked 




away and came back as soon as possible 
with a change of clothes. The scene 
was as I had left it, but duskier. I 
stood waiting for the next move. The 
Grizzly made it. He evidently had 
finished his meal for the night, and now 
moved majestically off up the hill 
towards the pine woods. At the edge 
of these he stood for a moment, Wahb's 
last appearance, so far as I am con- 
cerned, for, as he posed, the fading light 
dropped its curtain of darkness between 
us, and I was able to get Nimrod away. 




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XII. 

THE DEAD HUNT. 
3 




X 



XII. 




O hunt the wily puma, 
the wary elk, or the 
fleet-footed antelope 
is to have experiences 
strange and varied, but 
for the largest assort- 
ment of thrills in an equal time the 
' dead hunt ' is the most productive. 
My acquaintance with a ' dead hunt ' 

— which is by no means a ' still hunt ' 

— began and ended at Raven Agency. 
It included horses, bicycles, and In- 
dians, and followed none of the cus- 
tomary rules laid down for a hunt, 
either in progress or result. 





And, not to antagonise the reader, 
I will say now that it was very naughty 
to do what I did, an impolite and un- 
generous thing to do, on a par with 
the making up of slumming parties to 
pry into the secrets of the poor. It 
was the act of a vandal, and at times — 
in the gray dawn and on the first day 
of January — I am sorry about it; but 
then I should not have had that carved 
bead armlet, and as that is the tail of 
my story, I will put it in the mouth 
and properly begin. 

Nimrod and I went to the United 
States agency for the Asrapako or 
Raven Indians in — well, never mind, 
not such a far cry from the Rockies, 
unless you are one of those uncomfort- 
able persons who carry a map of the 
p" United States in your mind's eye — be- 
cause Burfield was there painting Many 




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Whacks, the famous chief; because 
Nimrod wanted to know what kind 
of beasties lived in that region ; and 
because I wanted a face to face en- 
counter with the Indian at home. I 
got it. 

The first duty of a stranger at Raven 
Agency is to visit the famous battle- 
field, three miles away; and the Agent, 
an army officer, very charmingly made 
up a horseback party to escort us 
there. He put me on a rawboned 
bay who, he said, was a "great goer." 
It was no merry jest. I was nearly 
the last to mount and quite the first to 
go flying down the road. The Great 
Goer galloped all the way there. His 
mouth was as hard as nails, and I could 
not check him; still, the ride was no 
worse than being tossed in a blanket for 
half an hour. 




On the very spot, I heard the story 
of the tragic Indian fight by one who 
claimed to have been an eye-witness. 
Every place where each member of 
that heroic band fell, doing his duty, is 
marked by a small marble monument, 
and as I looked over the battle ground 
and saw these symbols of beating hearts, 
long still in death, clustered in twos 
and threes and a dozen where each had 
made the last stand, every pillar seemed 
to become a shadowy soldier ; the whole 
awful shame of the massacre swept over 
me, and I was glad to head my horse ab- 
ruptly for home. And then there were 
other things to think about, things 
more intimate and real. No sooner 
did the Great Goer's nose point in the 
direction of his stable than he gave a 
great bound, as though a bee had stung 
him; then he lowered his head, laid 
back his ears, and — gallopped home. 




WE WHIZZED ACROSS THE RAILROAD TRACK IN FRONT OF 
THE DAY EXPRESS. 



w 



' v I yanked and tugged at the bit. It 

m was as a wisp of hay in his mouth. I 

n might as well have been a monkey or a 

Jn straw woman bobbing up and down on 

d his back. Pound, pound, thump, thump, 

P gaily sped on the Great Goer. There 

o were dim shouts far behind me for a 
T 

while, then no more. The roadside 

whipped by, two long streaks of green. 
We whizzed across the railroad track 
in front of the day express, accom- 
panied by the engine's frantic shriek of 
" down brakes." If a shoe had caught 
in the track — ah ! I lost my hat, my 
gold hatpin, every hairpin, and brown 
locks flew out two feet behind. 

Away went my watch, then the all in 
two pockets, knife, purse, match-box — 
surely this trail was an improvement on 
Tom Thumb's bread crumbs. One 
foot was out of the stirrup. I wrapped 
the reins around the pommel and clung 



*$& 



{(... 




on. There is a gopher hole — that 
means a broken leg for him, a clavicle 
and a few ribs for me. No; on we go. 
Ah, that stony brook ahead we soon 
must cross ! Ye gods, so young and so 
fair ! To perish thus, the toy of a raw- 
boned Great Goer ! 

Pound, pound, pound, the hard road 
rang with the thunder of hoofs. Could 
I endure it longer? Oh, there is the 
stream — surely he will stop. No ! He 
is going to jump! It's an awful dis- 
tance ! With a frantic effort I got my 
feet in the stirrups. He gathered him- 
self together. I shut my eyes. Oh ! 
We missed the bank and landed in the 
water — an awful mess. But the Great 
Goer scrambled out, with me still on 
top somehow, and started on. I pulled 
on the reins again with every muscle, 
trying to break his pace, or his neck — 





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anything that was his. Then there was 
a flapping noise below. We both 
heard it, we both knew what it was — 
the cinch worked loose, that meant the 
saddle loose. 

In desperation I clutched the Great 
Goer's mane with both hands and, lean- 
ing forward, yelled wildly in his ears : 

"Whoa, whoa! The saddle's turn- 
ing ! Whoa ! Do you wa-ant to ki-ill 

me?" 

Do not tell me that the horse is not a 
noble, intelligent animal with a vast 
comprehension of human talk and sym- 
pathy for human woe. For the Great 
Goer pulled up so suddenly that I 
nearly went on without him in the line 
of the least resistance. Then he stood 
still and went to nibbling grass as pla- 
cidly as though he had not been doing 
racing time for three miles, and I 



should have gone on forever believing 
in his wondrous wit had I not turned $ 
and realised that he was standing in his H /y 
own pasture lot. ' I 

Seeking to console my dishevelled t> 
self as I got off, I murmured, " Well, f 
it was a sensation any way — an abso- o 
lutely new one," just as Nimrod gal- 
lopped up, and seeing I was all right, 
called out : 

" Hello, John Gilpin ! " That is the 
way with men. 

My scattered belongings were gath- 
ered up by the rest of the party, and 
each as he arrived with the relic he had 
gathered, made haste to explain that his 
horse had no chance with my mount. 

I thanked the Agent for the Great 
Goer without much comment. (See 
advice to Woman-who-goes-hunting- 
with-her-husband.) But that is why, 




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the next day, when Burfield confided 
to me that he knew where there were 
some ' Dead-trees ' (not dead trees) 
that could be examined without fear 
of detection, I preferred to borrow the 
doctor's wife's bicycle. 

Dead-trees'? Very likely you know 
what I did not until I saw for myself, 
that the Asrapako, in common with 
several Indian tribes, place their dead 
in trees instead of in the ground. As 
the trees are very scarce in that arid 
country, and only to be found in gullies 
and along the banks of the Little Big 
Buck River, nearly every tree has its 
burden of one or more swathed-up 
bodies bound to its branches, half hid- 
den by the leaves, like great cocoons 
— most ghastly reminders of the end 
of all human things. 

It was to a cluster of these ' dead- 





trees,' five miles away, that Burfield 
guided me, and it was on this ride that 
the wily wheel, stripped of all its glam- 
our of shady roads, tete-a-tetes, down 
grades, and asphalts, appeared as its p 
true, heavy, small seated, stubborn self. p 
I can undertake to cure any bicycle § 
enthusiast. The receipt is simple and 
here given away. First, take two 
months of Rocky Mountains with a 
living sentient creature to pull you up 
and down their rock-ribbed sides, to 
help out with his sagacity when your 
own fails, and to carry you at a long 
easy lope over the grassy uplands some 
eight or ten thousand feet above the 
sea in that glorious bracing air. Sec- 
ondly, descend rapidly to the Montana 
plains — hot, oppressive, enervating — or 
to the Raven Agency, if you will, and 
attempt to ride a wheel up the only hill 



:29 



T 



in all that arid stretch of semi desert, a 
m rise of perhaps three hundred feet. 
n It is enough. You will find that your 

P head is a sea of dizziness, that your 
d lungs have refused to work, that your 
P heart is pounding aloud in agony, and 
8 you will then and there pronounce the 
wheel an instrument of torture, devised 
for the undoing of woman. 

I tried it. It cured me, and, once 
cured, the charms of the wheel are as 
vapid as the defence of a vigilant com- 
mittee to the man it means to hang. 
Stubborn — it would not go a step with- 
out being pushed. It would not even 
stand up by itself, and I literally had to 
push it — it, as well as myself on it — in 
toil and dust and heat the whole way. 
Nimrod said his bicycle betrayed itself, 
too, only not so badly. Of course, that 
was because he was stronger. The 



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weaker one is, the more stubbornly bi- 
cycles behave. Every one knows that. 
And they are so narrow minded. They 
needs must stick to the travelled road, 
and they behave viciously when they 
get in a rut. Imagine hunting ante- 
lope across sage-brush country on a 
bicycle ! I know a surveyor who tried 
it once. They brought him home with 
sixteen broken bones and really quite 
a few pieces of the wheel, improved to 
Rococo. Bah ! Away with it and its 
limitations, and those of its big brother, 
the automobile ! Sing me no death 
knell of the horse companion. 

At last, with the assistance of trail 
and muscle, the five miles were cov- 
ered, and we came to a dip in the earth 
which some bygone torrent had hol- 
lowed out, and so given a chance for a 
little moisture to be retained to feed 




v 

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X 



the half-dozen cottonwoods and rank 
grass that dared to struggle for exist- 
ence in that baked up sage-brush waste 
which the government has set aside for 
the Raven paradise. 

We jumped — no, that is horse talk 
— we sprawled off our wheels and left 
the stupid things lying supinely on 
their sides, like the dead lumpish 
things they are, and descended a steep 
bank some ten feet into the gully. 

It was a gruesome sight, in the hour 
before sunset, with not a soul but our- 
selves for miles around. The lowering- 
sun lighted up the under side of the 
leaves and branches and their strange 
burdens, giving an effect uncanny and 
weird, as though caused by unseen foot- 
lights. Not a sound disturbed the op- 
pressive quiet, not the quiver of a twig. 
Five of the six trees bore oblong bun- 









dies, wrapped in comforters and blank- 
ets, and bound with buckskin to the 
branches near the trunk, fifteen or 
twenty feet from the ground, too high 
for coyotes, too tight for vultures. But 
what caught our attention as we 
dropped into the gully was one of the 
bundles that had slipped from its fas- 
tenings and was hanging by a thong. 

It needed but a tug to pull it to the 
ground. Burfield supplied that tug, 
and we all got a shock when the 
wrappings, dislodged by the fall, parted 
at one end and disclosed the face of a 
mummy. I had retreated to the other 
end of the little dip. not caring to wit- 
ness some awful spectacle of disinte- 
gration; but a mummy — no museum- 
cased specimen, labelled ' hands off/ but 
a real mummy of one's own finding 
— was worth a few shudders to examine. 




A 



I looked into the shrivelled, but 
otherwise normal, face of the Indian 
woman. What had been her lite, her 
heart history, now as completely gone 
as though it had never been — thirty 
years of life struggle in snow and sun, 
with, perhaps, a little joy, and then 
what ? 

Seven brass rings were on her thumb 
and a carved wooden armlet encircled 
the wrist. These I was vandal enough 
to accept from Burfield. There were 
more rings and armlets, but enough is 
enough. As the gew-gaws had a pecu- 
liar, gaseous, left-over smell, I wrapped 
them in my gloves, and surely if trifles 
determine destiny, that act was one of 
the trifles that determined the fact that 
I was to be spared to this life for yet a 
while longer. For, as I was carelessly 
wrapping up my spoil, with a nose very 




E 



much turned up, Burfield suddenly 
started and then began bundling the 
wrappings around the mummy at great 
speed. Something was serious. I stoop- 
ed to help him, and he whispered : 

" Thought I heard a noise. If the p 
Indians catch us, there'll be trouble, § 
I'm afraid." T 

We hastily stood the mummy on 
end, head down, against the tree, and 
tried to make it look as though the 
coyotes had torn it down, after it had 
fallen within reach, as indeed they had, 
originally. Then we crawled to the 
other end of the gully, scrambled up 
the bank, and emerged unconcernedly. 

There was nothing in sight but long 
stretches of sage brush, touched here 
and there by the sun's last gleams. We 
were much relieved. Said Burfield : 

" The Indians are mighty ugly over 




that Spotted Tail fight, and if they had 
caught us touching their dead, it might 
have been unhealthy for us." 

" Why, what would they do *? " I 
asked, suddenly realising what many 
white men never do — that Indians are 
emotional creatures like ourselves. The 
brass rings became uncomfortably con- 
spicuous in my mind. 

" Well, I don't suppose they would 
dare to kill us so close to the agency, 
but I don't know ; a mad Injun's a bad 
Injun." 

Nevertheless, this opinion did not 
deter him from climbing a tree where 
three bodies lay side by side in a curi- 
ous fashion ; but I had no more in- 
terest in 'dead-trees,' and fidgeted. 
Nimrod had wandered off some dis- 
tance and was watching a gopher hole- 
up for the night. The place in the fad- 





ing light was spooky, but it was of live 
Indians, not dead ones, that I was 
thinking. 

There is a time for all things, and 
clearly this was the time to go back to 
Severin's dollar-a-day Palace Hotel. 
I started for the bicycles when two 
black specks appeared on the horizon 
and grew rapidly larger. They could 
be nothing but two men on horseback 
approaching at a furious gallop. It 
was but yaller-covered-novel justice that 
they should be Indians. 

"Quick, Burfield, get out of that 
tree on the other side ! " It did not 
take a second for man and tree to be 
quit of each other, at the imminent 
risk of broken bones. I started again 
for the wheels. 

" Stay where you are," said Bur- 
field ; " we could never get away on 





those things. If they are after us, we 
must bluff it out." 

There was no doubt about their 
being after us. The two galloping fig 
ures were pointed straight at us and 
were soon close enough to show that 
they were Indians. We stood like 
posts and awaited them. Thud, thud 
— ta-thud, thud — on they charged at a 
furious pace directly at us. They were 
five hundred feet away — one hundred 
feet — fifty. 

Now, I always take proper pride in 
my self possession, and to show how 
calm I was, I got out my camera, and 
as the two warriors came chasing up 
to the fifty-foot limit, I snapped it. I 
had taken a landscape a minute before, 
and I do not think that the fact that 
that landscape and those Indians ap- 
peared on the same plate is any proof 




-r 



that I was in the least upset by the red 
men's onset. Forty feet, thirty — on 
they came — ten — were they going to 
run us down*? 

Five feet full in front of us they g 
pulled in their horses to a dead stop — p 
unpleasantly close, unpleasantly sud- ^ 
den. Then there was an electric si- 
lence, such as comes between the light- 
ning's flash and the thunder's crack. 
The Indians glared at us. We stared 
at the Indians, each measuring the 
other. Not a sound broke the still- 
ness of that desolate spot, save the 
noisy panting of the horses as they 
stood, still braced from the shock of 
the sudden stop. 

For three interminable minutes we 
faced each other without a move. 
Then one of the Indians slowly roved 
his eyes all over the place, searching 




FIVE FEET FULL IN FKONT OF US, THEY PULLED THEIR HOUSES 
TO A DEAD STOP. 




suspiciously. From where he stood 
the tell-tale mummy was hidden by the 
bank and some bushes, and the tell-tale 
brass rings and armlet were in my 
gloves which I held as jauntily as pos- 
sible. He saw nothing wrong. He 
turned again to us. We betrayed no 
signs of agitation. Then he spoke 
grimly, with a deep scowl on his ugly 
face : 

"No touch 'em; savey 4 ?" giving a 
significant jerk of the head towards the 
trees. 

We responded by a negative shake 
of the head. Oh, those brass rings ! 
Why did I want to steal brass rings 
from the left thumb of an Indian wo- 
man mummy! Me! I should be carv- 
ing my name on roadside trees next ! 

There was another silence as before. 
None of us had changed positions, so 




much as a leaf's thickness. Then the 
ad Indian, _~ im and ugly as the 
first, spoke sullenly : 

••No touch 'em: savev?" He laid 
his hand suggestively on something in ^ 
his belt- | 

Again we shook our heads in a war § 
that deprecated the very idea of such a 
They gave another dissatisfied 
look around, and slowly turned their 
ho: c : 

We waited breathless to see which 
they would go. It they went on 
the other side or the gully, they must 
surely see that bundle on the ground 
and — who can tell what might hap- 
pen"? But they did not. With many 
a look backwards, they slowly rode 
awav. and with them the passive ele- 
ments of a tragedy. 

I tied my ill-gotten, ill-smelling pelf 



:.- • 



on the handle bar of the doctor's wire's 
bicycle, and we hurried home like 
spanked children. That night, aftei I 
had delivered unto the doctors wire 
her own. and disinfected the gewgaws 
in carbolic. I added two more subjects 
to my Never-again lis: — bicycling in 
Montana and "dead hur." 





v^' 



XIII. 

JUST RATTLESNAKES. 

33) 



XIII. 




T is a blessing that a 
rattlesnake has to coil 
before it can spring. 
No one has ever writ- 
ten up life from a rat- 
tler's point of view, 
although it has been unfeelingly stated 
that fear of snakes is an inheritance 
from our simian ancestors. 

To me, I acknowledge, a rattler is 
just a horrid snake ; so, when we were 
told at Markham that rattlers were more 
common than the cattle which grazed 



on every hill, I discovered that there 
were yet new imps to conquer in my 
world of fear. Shakspere has said some 
nice things about fear — " Of all the 
wonders, ... it seems to me most 
strange that men should fear " — but he 
never knew anything about squirming 
rattlesnakes. 

The Cuttle Fish ranch is five miles 
from Markham. That thriving metrop- 
olis has ten houses and eleven saloons, 
in spite of Dakota being 'prohibition.' 
Markham is in the heart of the Bad 
Lands, the wonderful freakish Bad 
Lands, where great herds of cattle 
range over all the possible, and some 
of the impossible, places, while the rest 
of it — black, green, and red peaks, hills 
of powdered coal, wicked land cuts 
that no plumb can fathom, treacherous 
clay crust over boiling lava, arid hor- 



u 

i 

D 
E 
R 
F 

8 

T 



;>» 



rid miles of impish whimsical Nature 
— is Bad indeed. 

Nimrod and I had been lured to the 
Cuttle Fish ranch to go on a wolf 
hunt. The house was a large two storey 
affair of logs, with a long tail of one 
storey log outbuildings like a train of 
box cars. We sat down to dinner the 
first night with twenty others, a queer 
lot truly to find in that wild uncivil- 
ised place. There was an ex-mayor 
and his wife from a large Eastern city; 
a United States Senator — the toughest 
of the party — who appeared at table 
in his undershirt; four cowboys, who 
were better mannered than the two 
New York millionaires' sons who had 
been sent there to spend their college 
vacation and get toughened (the pro- 
cess was obviously succeeding); they 
made Nimrod apologise for keeping 



W 



H 



it KsHoH^ 





his coat on during dinner) ; the three 
brothers who owned the ranch, and 
the wife of one of them; several chil- 
dren ; a prim and proper spinster from 
Washington — how she got there, who 
can tell? — and Miss Belle Hadley, the 
servant girl. 

In studying the case of Belle I at 
last appreciated the age-old teaching 
that the greatest dignity belongs to the 
one who serves. Else why did the ex- 
mayor's wife bake doughnuts, and the 
rotund Senator toil at the ice cream 
freezer with the thermometer at 112 
degrees, and the millionaires' sons call 
Belle " Miss Hadley," and I make 
bows for her organdie dress, while she 
curled her hair for a dance to be 
held that evening ten miles away, 
and to which she went complacently 
with her pick of the cowboys and her 




employers' two best horses, while they 
stayed at home and did her work ! Else 
why did this one fetch wood for her, 
that one peel the potatoes, another wash 
the dishes ? And when she and the 
rest of us were seated at meals, and 
something was needed from the kitchen, 
why did the unlucky one nearest the 
door jump up and forage % Belle was 
never nearest the door. She sat at the 
middle of the long table, so that she 
could be handy to everything that was 
'circulating.' But I refer this case to 
the author of those delightful papers on 
the " Unquiet Sex," and hark back to 
my story. 

That night the moon was full, and 
the coyotes made savage music around 
the lonely ranch house. First from the 
hill across the creek came a snappy 
wozv-zvow, yac-yac, and then a long 




drawn out 000-00 ; then another voice, a 
soprano, joined in, followed by a bari- 
tone, and then the star voice of them 
all — loud, clear, vicious, mournful. For 
an instant I saw him silhouetted against 
the rising moon on the hill ridge, head 
thrown back and muzzle raised, as he 
gave to the peaceful night his long, 
howling bark, his " talk at moon " as 
the Indians put it. The ranchman re- 
marked that there were " two or three 
out there," but I knew better. There 
were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of 
them ; I am not deaf. 

The next morning we were up with 
the dawn and started by eight to run 
down Mountain Billy, the grey wolf 
who lived on the ranchmen of the Bad 
Lands. Our outfit was as symmetrical 
as a pine cone — dogs, horses, mess 
wagon, food, guns, and men. All we 




THE COYOTES MADE SAVAGE MUSIC. 



needed was the grey wolf. I was the 
only woman in the party, and, like 
"Weary Waddles," tagged behind. 

It was the middle of September, and 
the weather should have known better. 
But it was the Bad Lands, and there 
was a hot spell on. By three o'clock 
the thermometer showed ii6}4 in the 
shade, and I believed it. The heat 
and glare simmered around us like fire. 
The dogs' tongues nearly trailed in the 
baked dust, the horses' heads hung low, 
an iron band seemed ever tightening 
around my head, as the sun beat down 
upon all alike with pitiless force. 

When we came to the Little Missoula, 
even its brackish muddy water was 
welcome, and I shut my eyes to the 
dirt in the uninviting brown fluid, and 
my mind to the knowledge of the hor- 
rid things it would do to me, and drank. 




Tepid, gritty, foul — was it water I 
had swallowed ? The horse assigned to 
me, a small, white, benevolent animal 
named ' Whiskers,' waded in knee 
deep and did the same. Whiskers was 
a 'lady's horse,' which, being inter- 
preted, meant aged eighteen or twenty, 
with all spirit knocked out by hard 
work ; a broken down cow pony, in 
fact, or, in local parlance, a ' skate,' a 
* goat.' He had lagged considerably 
behind the rest of the party. 

However, Whiskers did not matter; 
nothing mattered but the waves on 
waves of heat that quivered before my 
eyes. I shut them and began repeat- 
ing cooling rhymes, such as ' twin 
peaks snow clad,' ' From Greenland's 
Icy Mountains,' and the ' Frozen 
North,' by way of living up to Pro- 
fessor James' teachings. Whiskers was 




N 
D 
E 
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F 
G 
O 
T 



ambling on, half-stupefied with the 
heat, as I was, when from the road just 
in front came a peculiar sound. I did 
not know what it was, but Whiskers 
did, and he immediately executed a 
demi volte (see Webster) with an en- 
ergy I had not thought him capable of. 
Again came the noise, yes, surely, 
just as it had been described — like 
dried peas in a pod — and gliding across 
the road was a big rattlesnake. I con- 
fess had Whiskers been so inclined, I 
should have been content to have 
passed on with haughty disdain. But 
Whiskers performed a left flank move- 
ment so nearly unseating me that I 
deemed it expedient to drop to the 
ground, and Whiskers, without wait- 
ing for orders, retreated down the road 
at what he meant for a gallop. The 
rattler stopped his pretty gliding motion 



,*i* 




: ?m me. and seemed in do 
Then he began to take on a tew quirks 

Hr s going :; ;::'_ and then to 

: ■■ v- 5.. i I. :e:.. -_ .. : .-/._-.. 
:*: r. ~.v >;"-;•;' -t.._.7- I: ••■.-„; --. ::■ 



.? 



I knew that tradition had fixed the 
::::■:* ' r„: :: - : : 7 ..-- i .._;.. r.s: ra> 
" f?r_ikr: :. r --: n:ore :: r.ecessarj . 
i 5:::k :;:kr J re r:e:e"; . .ir.i :r. 
.-- ..--:.. -7 •■ . . ■ 7- ■ . -- : . ; : -* 
-: 1 : .. r - I bad no 1 

d Jt a stick in sight, and not 
k ;:cr.e : jj ■ :hi- 2 hiz- -.-_::: bu: 
there :ne rattier. I cast anol 

despairing glance around and saw. al- 
most at my feel ~d half hidden by 
brash, x e-al inches 01 rusty iron 
— blessed be the pass _ who 

had thrown it there. I da: - ards 

it ar. : lesjf :e tradition, turned on the 







■ 









■-:■ 





«=5 



THE HORRID THING WAS READY FOR ME. 



' rattler armed with the goodly remains 
|m of — a frying pan. 

n The horrid thing was ready for me 

with darting tongue and flattened head 
— another instant it would have sprung. 
Smash on its head went my val- 
iant frying pan and struck a deadly 
blow, although the thing managed to 
get from under it. I recaptured my 
weapon and again it descended upon 
the reptile's head, settling it this time. 
Feeling safe, I now took hold of the 
handle to finish it more quickly. Oh, 
that tail — that awful, writhing, lash- 
ing tail ! I can stand Indians, bears, 
wolves, anything but that tail, and 
a rattler is all tail, except its head. If 
that tail touches me I shall let go. It 
did touch me, I did not let go. Pride 
held me there, for I heard the sound 
of galloping hoofs. Whiskers' empty 



saddle had alarmed the rest of the 
party. 

My snake was dead now, so I put 
one foot on him to take his scalp — his 
rattles, I mean — when horrid thrills 
coursed through me. The uncanny 
thing began to wriggle and rattle with 
old-time vigour. I do not like to think 
of that simian inheritance. But, forti- 
fied by Nimrod's assurance that it was 
' purely reflex neuro-ganglionic move- 
ment,' I hardened my heart and cap- 
tured his ' pod of dry peas.' 

Oh, about the wolf hunt ! That was 
all, just heat and rattlesnakes. 

The hounds could not run; one died 
from sunstroke while chasing a jack 
rabbit. No one lifted a finger if it 
could be avoided. All the world was 
an oven, and after three days we gave 
up the chase, and leaving Mountain 




F 

§ 

T 



Billy panting triumphantly somewhere 
in his lair, trailed back to the ranch 
house with drooping heads and fifteen 
rattle-snakes' tails. Oh, no, the hunt 
was not a failure — for Mountain Billy. 



I 






Ti 




XIV. 
AS COWGIRL. 




XIV. 




ILL the time of the 
"WB" round-up all 
cows looked alike to 
me. We were still at 
the Cuttle Fish ranch, 
which was in a state or 
great activity because of the fall round- 
up. Belle, the servant girl, had received 
less attention of late and had been 
worked harder, a combination of disa- 
greeables which caused her to threaten 
imminent departure. The cowboys, who 
had been away for several days gather- 
ing in the stragglers that had wandered 




into the wild recesses of those uncanny 
Bad Land hills, assembled in full force 
for the evening meal, and announced, 
between mouthfuls, that the morrow 
was to be branding day for the several 
outfits, about two thousand head of 
cattle in all, the ' WB' included, which 
were rounded up on the Big Flat two 
miles distant from the ranch. 

This was the chance for me to be re- 
lieved of my crass ignorance concern- 
ing round-ups, really to have a definite 
conception of the term instead of the 
sea of vagueness and conjecture into 
which I was plunged by the usual de- 
scription — "Oh, just a whole lot of cattle 
driven to one place, and those that need 
it are cut out and frescoed." How many 
was a whole lot, how were they driven, 
where were they driven from, what 
were they cut out with, how were 





they branded, and when did they need 
it"? My ignorance was hopeless and 
pathetic, and those to whom I applied 
were all too familiar with the process 
to be able to describe it. I might as 
well have asked for a full description or 
how a man ate his dinner. 

"Will you take me to the round- 
up to-morrow *?" I asked of the k WB' 
boss. 

" Well, I could have a team hitched 
up, and Bob could drive you to the 
Black Nob Hill, where you can get a 
good view," was the tolerant reply. 

Bob had wrenched his foot the day 
before, when roping a steer, and was 
therefore incapacitated for anything but 
' woman's work ' — ' a soft job.' 

" Oh, but I do not want to be so far 
away and look on ; I want to be in it." 

He looked at me out of the angle of 




his eye to make sure that I was in 
earnest. " 'Tain't safe," he said. 

" Then you mean to say that every 
cowboy risks his life in a round-up?" 

" Oh, well, they're men and take 
their chances. Besides, it's their busi- 
ness." 

I never yet have been able to have 
a direct question answered by a true 
mountaineer or plainsman by a simple 
yes or no. Is there something in the 
bigness of their surroundings that 
causes the mind to spread over an idea 
and lose directness like a meadow 
brook *? 

However, by various wiles known to 
my kind, the next morning at daybreak 
I was mounted upon the surest-footed 
animal in the 'bunch.' 

" She's a trained cow pony and 
won't lose her head," the boss re- 
marked. 





Thus equipped, I was allowed to 
m accompany the cowboys to their work, 
n with the understanding that I was to 
|v keep at a safe distance from the herd. 
d Van Anden, a famous 'cutter out,' 
p whatever that meant, was deputed 
8 to have an especially watchful eye 
upon me. Van Anden was a sur- 
prisingly graceful fellow, who got his 
six foot of stature in more places dur- 
ing the day than any of the smaller 
men. He was evidently a cowboy be- 
cause he wanted to be one. There 
were many traces of a college educa- 
tion and a thorough drilling in good 
manners in an Eastern home, which 
report said could still be his if he so 
wished ; and report also stated that he 
remained a bachelor in spite of being 
the most popular man in the country, 
because of a certain faithless siren who 
with gay unconcern casts languishing 




<2>- 



*ft 



- «5^« 



>1 




glances and spends papa's dollars at 
Newport. 

But this was no Beau Brummel day. 
There was work to do, and hard work, 
as I soon discovered. We had ridden 
perhaps a mile; my teeth were still 
chattering in the early morning cold 
(breaking ice on one's bath water and 
blowing on one's fingers to enable one 
to lace heavy boots may suit a cow- 
boy : I do not pretend to like it), when 
we began to notice a loud bellowing in 
the distance. Instantly my compan- 
ions spurred their horses and we went 
speeding over the Little Missoula bot- 
tom lands, around scrub willows and 
under low hanging branches of oak, 
one of which captured my hat, after 
breaking both of the hat pins, and 
nearly swept me from the saddle. 

On I rushed with the rest, hatless, 





and as in a cloud of fury. Van Anden 
took a turn around that tree and was at 
my side again with the hat before I 
realised what he was doing. I jerked 
out a " thank you " between lopes, and 
of course forbore to remark that a 
hat without pins was hollow mockery. 
I dodged the next low branch so suc- 
cessfully that the pommel in some mi- 
raculous way jumped up and smashed 
the crystal in my watch, the same being 
carried in that mysterious place, the 
shirt waist front, where most women 
carry their watches, pocket books, and 
love letters. 

When we got into the open the ter- 
rible bellowing — a combination of shriek, 
groan, and roar in varying pitch— grew 
louder, and I could just discern a wav- 
ing ghostly mass in the gray morning 
mist. I wondered if this were the herd, 





but found it was only the cloud of dust 
in which it was enveloped. 

Four of the cowboys had already 
disappeared in different directions. I 
heard the 'WB' boss say, "Billy, to 
the left flank. Van, them blamed heif- 
ers," as he flew past them. 

Van dashed forward, I gave my 
black mare a cut with the quirt and 
followed. Van's face, as he turned 
around to remonstrate, was a study of 
surprise, distress, and disgust, for I was 
undoubtedly breaking rules. 

"Don't bother about me," I called 
as airily as possible, as I shot past him. 
He had checked his horse's speed, but 
now there was nothing to do but to 
follow me as fast as he could. I shall 
have to record that he swore, as he 
turned sharply to the right into a group 
of cattle. Poor man, it was dreadful 






fi 



F 

§ 

T 






to saddle him with a woman at such a 
juncture, but I was not a woman just 
then. I was a green cowboy and 
frightened to death, as the cattle closed 
around me, a heavy mass of ponderous 
forms, here wedged in tightly and bel- 
lowing, some with the pain of being 
crushed, some for their calves. I ex- 
pected every instant to be trampled 
under foot. 

" Stick to your horse, whatever you 
do, and work to the left," I heard Van 
shouting to me over the backs of a 
dozen cows. The dust, the noise, and 
the smell of those struggling creatures 
appalled and sickened me. How was 
I ever going to work to the left in that 
jam *? I could see nothing but backs 
and heads and horns. I allowed myselt 
one terrified groan which was fortu- 
nately lost in the general uproar. But 



the pony had been in such a situation 
before, if I had not, and she taught me 
what to do. She gave a sudden spring 
forward when a space just big enough 
for her appeared, then wove her way 
a few paces forward between two ani- 
mals who had room enough on the 
other side of them to give way a little, 
while the space I had just left had 
closed up, a tight mass of groaning 
creatures. 

Thus we worked our way to the left 
whenever there was a chance, and at 
last through the dust I could see the 
heavenly open space beyond. Forget- 
ting my tactics, I made straight for it, 
and was caught in one of those terrible 
waves of tightly pressed creatures 
which is caused by those on the out- 
side pressing towards the centre, and 
the centre giving until there is no more 




T 





space, when comes the crush. Fortu- 
nately I was on the outskirts of this 
crush, and by holding my feet up high 
we managed to squeeze through that 
dreadful, dust covered, stamping, snort- 
ing bedlam into the glorious free air 
and sunshine. Already I had a much 
better conception of what a ' whole lot ' 
of cattle meant. 

From the vantage ground of a little 
hill I could see the whole herd, and 
realised that I had been in only a small 
bunch of it, composed of cows and 
calves. Had I gone to the right I 
should soon have gotten into a raging 
mass of some thousand head of bulls. 
They were pawing and tearing up the 
ground that but a little before had been 
covered with grass and late flowers, and 
occasionally goring one another. The 
cowboys were riding on the outskirts 




of this life-destroying horde, forcing the 
stragglers back into line, and by many 
a sudden dash forward, then to the right, 
sharp wheel about, and more spurts this 
way and that, were slowly driving it to- p 
ward another mass of cattle, a half mile p 
further on, which could be distinguished o 
only by the clouds of dust which en- 
veloped it. 

Van Anden, meanwhile, in the small 
bunch with which I had had such an 
intimate acquaintance, was acting as 
though he had lost his wits, or so it 
seemed to me until I began to under- 
stand what he was doing. He would 
dart into the bunch, scattering cattle 
right and left, and would weave in and 
out, out and in, waving his arms, 
shouting, throwing his rope, occasion- 
ally hitting an animal across the nose 
or the flank, sometimes twisting their 




tails, dodging blows and kicks, and fi- 
nally emerge driving before him a cow 
followed by her calf. These another 
cowboy would take charge of and drive 
to a small bunch of cows and calves 
which I now noticed for the first time, 
separating them from their relations, 
who remonstrated in loud bellowings, 
stampings and freakish, brief, ill judged 
attacks. And then I understood what 
it meant to 'cut out' cattle from 'a 
whole lot.' 

When the calves and cows were 
finally separated, it was necessary to 
drive them also to the Big Flat for the 
afternoon's work of branding those 
that ' needed it.' Van guarded the 
rear of the bunch and of course I rode 
with him, that is as near as I could, 
for he was as restless as a blue bottle fly 
in a glass jar, dashing hither and thither, 






age to no one. 



A particularly fractious heifer at 
this point suddenly changed my con- 
templation of Van Anden's charac- 
ter into a lively share of Van Anden's 
job. The creature was making good 



keeping those crazy creatures together, 
and ever pushing them forward. The $ W 
dust and heat and noise and smell and N 
continual action made my head ache. ^T 
So this was cowboy life, Van's choice ! p 
I thought of a certain far away, well p 
ordered home, with perhaps a sweet § 
voiced mother and well groomed sis- 
ter, and wondered, even while I knew 
the answer. On the one hand, peace, 
comfort, affection, and the eternal 
sameness ; on the other, effort, hard- 
ship, fighting sometimes, but ever with 
the new day a whole world of unlived 
possibilities, change, action, and bond- 





I STARTED ON A GALLOP, SWINGING ONE ARM. 




time straight towards me, and as I had 
dropped considerably behind the herd 
in order to breathe some tresh air and 
to be free from the dust, I knew that it 
meant a long hard chase for Van and 
his tired horse if I did not head off that 
heifer; I felt I owed him that much. I 
had seen the cowboys do that very 
thing a hundred times that morning, 
but you cannot stand on your toe by 
watching a ballet dancer do it. How- 
ever, I started on a gallop, slanting diag- 
onally towards the creature, swinging 
one arm frantically (I really could not 
let go with both) and yelling " Hi, hi ! " 
I wondered what would happen next, 
for to be honest, I was exquisitely 
scared. Why scared ? It is not for me 
to explain a woman's dread ot the un- 
known and untried. 

I heard Van shouting, but could not 





understand. To know you are right 
and then go ahead is a pretty plan, but 
how to know? The animal did not 
stop or swerve from its course. We 
would surely collide. What was I to 
do ? Oh, for a precedent ! Evidently 
the mare was aware of one, for she 
wheeled to the right just in time to 
miss the oncoming heiter, and we 
raced alongside for a few seconds. I 
had so nearly parted company with my 
mount in the last manoeuvre (centaurs 
would have an enormous advantage 
as cowboys) that I had lost all desire 
to help Van and only wanted to get 
away from that heifer, to make an hon- 
ourable dismount, and go somewhere 
by myself where a little brook babbled 
nothings, and the forget-me-nots pla- 
cidly slept. Rough riding and adven- 
tures of the Calamity Jane order tempt- 
ed me no more. 



8/7 

T 

E 



/-i 



F 

§ 
f 




Whether now the heifer did the 
proper thing or not, I cannot say, 
but she circled around with me on the 
outer side (I suspect my cow pony 
knew how it was done) and was half 
way back, to the herd when Van took 
it in charge. His face bore a broad 
grin for the first time that day, from 
what emotions caused I have never 
been able to determine. I, of course, 
said nothing. 

Then, oh, the joy of that round up 
dinner ! The ' WB' outfit had a meal 
tent, a mess wagon, and a cook for the 
men, and a rope corral, food and water 
for the horses. Everybody was happy 
for the noon hour, save the unlucky 
ones whose turn it was to guard the 
herd. Bob had driven the ex-mayor's 
wife, the sad eyed spinster, and Nim- 
rod over to join us at dinner. The 
boss greeted Nimrod with the assur- 





ance that I was ' all right ' and could 
apply any time for a job. I may as 
well say that Nimrod had allowed me 
to go without him in the morning, be- 
cause the cattle business was no novelty 
to him ; because daybreak rising did not 
appeal to him as a pastime ; and because, 
at the time I broached the subject, being 
engaged in writing a story, he had re- 
moved but one-eighth of his mind for 
the consideration of mundane affairs, 
and that, as any one knows, is insuffic- 
ient to judge fairly whether the winged 
thing I was reaching out for was a fly 
or a bumble bee. In the morning, the 
story being finished and the other seven- 
eights of brain at liberty to dwell upon 
the same question, he decided to follow 
me, with the result that in the afternoon 
I rode in the wagon. 

The cowboy meal, which I believe 




was not elaborated for us, was a 
healthy solid affair of meat, vege- 
tables, hot biscuit, coffee, and prunes, 
appetisingly cooked and unstintingly 
served, for the Bad Land appetite is 
like unto that of the Rocky Mountains, 
lusty and big. The saddling of fresh 
horses made a lively scene for a few 
moments in the corral ; then the men 
rode off for the afternoon's business of 
branding. 

The ranch party packed itself into 
a three-seated buckboard and we fol- 
lowed behind. We went at a wide 
safe distance from the half-crazed 
herds, which had been driven this way 
and that until they knew not what they 
wanted, nor what was wanted of them, 
to where a huge fire was blazing and 
rapidly turning cold black iron to red 
hot. These irons were fashioned in 




curious shapes, from six to ten inches 
long and fastened to a four foot iron 
handle. The smell of burning flesh 
was in the air, and horrid shrieks. Be- 
yond was the ceaseless bellowing and 
stamping and weaving of the herds. 

From the time I got into the wagon 
and became a mere onlooker, my point 
of view changed. The exhilaration of 
action had disappeared. I was a cowboy 
no longer. The cattle in the morning 
had been stupid foolish creatures, dan- 
gerous in their blind strength, which 
must be made to do what one willed. 
Now they were poor, dumb, persecuted 
beasts which must be tormented, even 
tortured (for who shall say that red hot 
iron on tender flesh is not torture ?) and 
eventually butchered for the swelling 
of man's purse. I saw the riders dash 
towards an animal who ' needed brand- 




ing ' — which I discovered to mean one 
that had hitherto escaped the iron, or 
that had changed owners — throw a rope 
over its head or horns, fasten the other 
end to the pommel, and drag it to the 
fire, where it was thrown and tied. 
Then it was seized by several men who 
sat on its head and legs to hold it com- 
paratively still while another took the 
hot brand from the fire and pressed it 
against the quivering side of the animal. 
It was then released and, bawling with 
pain and fright, allowed to return to its 
mother, who had been kept off by an- 
other rider. A sound at my side in- 
formed me that the little old maid was 
weeping copiously. 

It is a pity I could not have had the 
cowboy's point of view, for mine was 
most unpleasant, but my little glimpse 
of the other side was gone, and gladly 



^ ./,.• 



=fr* 










I drove away from the mighty smells 
and sounds of that unfortunate mass of 
seething life, subjected to the will of a 
dozen men, Van Anden the worst of 
the lot. And as we went silently 
through the sweet cool air, crisp as 
an October leaf, where a bluebird 
was twittering a wing-free song on 
the poplar yonder, where silver-turned 
willows were gently swaying, and a 
jolly chipmunk was rippling from log 
to stone, I wondered whether the New- 
port girl had really done so wrong after 
all. 





o 

M 

t\ 

E N 

N 

D 

E 

R 

| XV. 



THE SWEET PEA LADY. 

SOME ONE ELSE'S 
MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 

"3 




XV. 




T was at Winnipeg 
(you do not want to 
know how we got 
there) that I first 
walked into the aura 
of the Sweet Pea Lady, 
and by so doing prepared the way for 
the shatterment of another illusion — 
namely, that ' little deeds of kindness ' 
always result in mutual pleasure. 

Flowers and fruit in Manitoba are 
treasured as sunshine in London, for 
you must remember that Manitoba is 
a very new country, that it is only a 




paltry few thousands of years since its 
thousands of miles were scraped flat as 
a floor. Everything even yet looks so 
immodest on those vast stretches. The 
clumps of trees stand out in such a 
bold brazen fashion. The houses ap- 
pear as though stuck on to the land- 
scape. Even an honest brown cow can 
not manage to melt herself into the 
endless stretch of prairies. In fact, the 
little scenic accidents of trees and hol- 
lows, which mean fruit and flowers, are 
mainly due to man. 

So, when our friends who saw us off 
on the west-bound Canadian Pacific left 
in our sleeper two huge bouquets of 
sweet peas and ten pounds of black- 
berries, we knew that the finest garden 
in Winnipeg had been rifled to do us 
pleasure. Now, I dearly love flowers 
and fruit, as I did the giver, but ten 




pounds of great, fat blackberries and 
an armful of sweet peas in a cramped 
stuffy Pullman caused my heart to re- 
sound in the minor chords. We rallied 
again and again to demolish the fruit 
as we voyaged, and sat with one foot 
on top of the other to avoid crushing 
the lovely pea blossoms as we fidgeted 
about, but the results of our efforts, 
messy fruit in hopeless abundance and 
withering leaves in dreary profusion, 
were discouraging. 

When the noon hour came, Nimrod 
carried the fruit basket into the diner 
and set it down on the table. The 
waiter eyed us askance. " It's a dol- 
lar each for dinner, sah." It was clear 
we were emigrants. We paid the wait- 
er's demand and then from soup to 
coffee ate blackberries — blackberries 
until we were black in the mouth and 




pale in the face. Then we picked up X 
our basket, upon the contents of which $ <y 
our labours had apparently made no im- n' 
pression, and, hastily pushing a plate ' T 
over the rich red stain it had left on $ 
the table cloth, departed with our fruit p 
and a grieved feeling in the region ot § 
our hearts. It may not be amiss to 
remark that I have never eaten a 
blackberry since. To get to our car 
it was necessary to pass through an- 
other sleeper, where I noticed a made 
up berth in which was reclining a 
young woman, and hovering over her 
solicitously a man, evidently the hus- 
band. 

Hope and joy awoke within me — 
perhaps she would like some black- 
berries ! No, she would not venture to 
eat fruit, and with many thanks, oh, 
many, many thanks, she declined it. 




But the blessedness of giving I felt 
must be mine, so I bribed the porter 
to take as many sweet peas as he could 
cany and present them to the sick lady 
in the next car, and on no account to 
tell where he got them. I did not want 
the thanks, neither did I want the sweet 
peas, but I was illogical enough to 
hope that the Recording Angel would 
be busy and accept the act at its face 
value as a " deed of kindness." 

It must have been a slack day with 
the angel, for this is a brief but accu- 
rate account of what followed, and I 
am willing to leave it to any human, 
whether my punishment was not out of 
all proportion to the offense committed : 

One hour later. Train stops for ten 
minutes. I got out for fresh air and 
promenade on platform. Behold, the 
first object that meets my gaze is the 





sick lady, miraculously recovered. She 
swooped down upon me with the dead- 
ly light of determination in her eyes. 
I was discovered. There was no es- 
cape. I was going to be thanked — and 
I was thanked. Up and down, back- 
wards and forwards, inside and out, 
and all hands around. And when she 
paused breathless her husband took up 
the theme. It seems she was a semi in- 
valid, and the sweet peas were quite the 
most heavenly thing that could have 
happened to her. Nimrod joined me 
at this moment and he was thanked 
separately and dually, for being the 
husband of his wife, I suppose. At last 
we were able to retire with profuse 
bows, tired but exceedingly thankful 
that the incident, though trying, was 
ended. 

Three minutes later. Have been driv- 
en indoors by the sweet pea woman, 





b 



as each turn of the walk brought us 
face to face, when it immediately be- 
came necessary to nod and smile, and 
for our husbands to lift hats and smile, 
until we looked like loose-necked 
manikins. At least, the sleeper is 
tranquil, if stuffy. 

Supper time. Have been thanked 
again by the Sweet Pea Lady, who sat 
at our table. She had sweet peas in 
her hair, and at her belt. The husband 
had a boutonniere of them. 

Next morning, Carberry. Bade an 
elaborate farewell to the Sweet Pea 
Lady. She is going straight to the 
coast where they catch steamer for 
Japan. Praise be to Allah ! I shall see 
her no more. The heavy polite is 
wearing. vmu| 

Next day, Banff Hot Springs. First 
person on the hotel steps I see is the 
S. P. Lady. She rushed up and as- 




sured me that the S. P.'s were still 
fresh, and that she and her husband 
had unexpectedly stopped over for a 
day. 

Next day. Spent the day avoiding 
S. P. L. Left for Glacier House in the 
evening. At least, I shall not see S. 
P. L. there, as they have to go right 
through to catch steamer. 

tf-wo days later, Glacier House. Had 
horrid shock. Found apparition of S. 
P. Lady sitting beside me at break- 
fast table. She began to speak, then I 
knew it was the real thing. She as- 
sured me that many of the S. P.'s were 
still fresh, as she had clipped their 
stems night and morning. I again said 
good by to her, and to those ghastly 
flowers. She just has time to catch her 
steamer. 

tfhree days later: Vancouver. Ran 
^ross the S. P. Lady in hotel corridor. 



/t 




She saw me first. There was another 
weary interchange of the heavy polite. 
Her steamer had been delayed from 
sailing for two days — in order that we 
might meet again, I have no doubt. 

Next morning. She's gone. Ring the 
bells, boom the cannon ! I saw the 
Japan steamer bear the Sweet Pea 
Lady rapidly into deep water. At last 
easeful peace may again dream on my 
shoulder. When I returned to the hotel 
the clerk, handed me an envelope enclos- 
ing a lady's visiting card (kind fate, she 
lives in Japan) on which was written 
" In grateful appreciation of your kind- 
ness," and with the card were two 
sprays of Pressed Sweet Peas. 

After this when it comes to " scat- 
tering deeds of kindness on the weary 
way," I shall be the woman who didn't, 
and who shall say me nay"? 

However, all this flower and fruit 




piece was but an episode ; the event 
of that journey was the intimate ac- 
quaintance we made of the Great Gla- 
cier of the Selkirks, and the nice op- 
portunity I had to lose my life. And 
the only reason this tale is not more 
tragic is because, given the choice, I 
preferred to lose the opportunity rather 
than the life. 

I wonder if I can give any idea to 
one who has not seen it what a snow 
slide really is; how it sweeps away 
every vestige of trees, grass, and roots, 
and leaves a surface of shifting, un- 
stable earth almost as treacherous as 
quicksand. 

Nimrod and I had paid a superficial 
visit to the Glacier the day before : that 
is, we had gone as far as its forefoot, a 
hard but thoroughly safe climb, and 
had explored with awe the green glass 




THE WARM BEATING HEART OF A MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 




ice caves with which the Great Glacier 
has seen fit to decorate its lower line, 
wonderful rooms of ice, emerald in the 
shadows, with glacial streams for 
floors. 

So the next morning we started out, 
intending a little bit to further explore 
the vast, cold, heartless ice sheet (vaster 
than all the Swiss glaciers together), 
but more to hunt for the warm beat- 
ing heart of a mountain sheep, whose 
home is here. We had been travel- 
ling for miles in the wildest kind of 
earth upheavals, for the Selkirks are 
still hard and fast in the grip of the ice 
king; huge boulders, uprooted trees, 
mighty mountains, released but recent- 
ly from the glacial wet blanket, when 
Nimrod discovered the stale track of a 
mountain sheep. We followed it ea- 
gerly till it brought us across the path 




of a snow slide. At that point it was 
about five hundred feet across, at an 
angle of forty-five degrees ; below us a 
thousand feet was a vicious looking 
glacial torrent ; above, an equal dis- 
tance, was the lower edge of the gla- 
cier, the mother of all this devastation. 
The fearless-footed mountain sheep 
had crossed this sliding crumbling- 
earth and gravel incline with apparent 
ease. For us it was go on or go back. 
There was no middle course. The row 
of tiny hoof marks running straight 
across from one safe bank to the other 
deceived us. It could not be so very 
difficult. We dismounted; Nimrod 
threw the bridle over his horse's head 
and started across, leading his beast. 
The animal snorted as he felt the foot- 
hold giving way beneath him, but Nim- 
rod pulled him along. It was impos- 




11 



£%$> 





sible to stand still. It would have been 
as easy for quicksilver to remain at the 
top of an incline. Amid rattling stones 
and sliding earth they landed on the 
firm bank beyond, fully three hundred 
feet below me. 

It was a shivery sight, but I started 
expecting the horse would follow. He, 
however, jerked back snorting and 
trembling, which unexpected move up- 
set my equilibrium, uncertain at best, 
and I fell. Nothing but the happy 
chance of a tight grip on the reins kept 
me from sliding down that dreadful 
bank, over the rock into the water, and 
so into eternity (Please pardon the Sal- 
vation Army metaphor). 

I had barely time to right myself and 
get out of the way of my horse, which 
now plunged forward upon the sliding 
rock with me. The terrified animal 




lost his head completely. I could not 
keep away from his hoofs. He would 
not let me keep in front, I dare not get 
above for fear I should slip under his 
feet, or below him for fear he should 
slide upon me. I lost my balance 
again while dodging away from him 
as he plunged and balked, but man- 
aged to grab his mane and we both 
slid a horrible distance. I could hear 
Nimrod shouting on the bank, but did 
not seem to understand him. I had the 
stage, centre front, and it was all I 
could attend to. 

We were now opposite to Nimrod, 
but only half way across. Such an 
ominous rolling and tumbling of stones 
and tons of earth sliding down over 
the low precipice into the water! I 
expected to be with it each instant. 
Nimrod had started out after me. 




I COULD NOT KEEP AWAY FROM HIS HOOFS. 




Then I understood what he was shout- 
ing : " Let go that horse." Why, of 
course ! Why had I not thought of 
that ? I did let go and, thus freed, man- 
aged to get across, falling, slipping, 
but still making progress until I 
reached the safe ground one hundred 
feet lower in a decidedly dilapidated 
condition. My animal followed me in- 
stinctively for a short distance, and 
Nimrod got him the rest of the way — I 
do not know how. It did not interest 
me then. 

And the saddest of all, the mountain 
sheep had vanished into the unknown, 
taking his little tracks with him, so we 
had to go back in a roundabout way, 
without sheep, without joy — and with- 
out a tragedy. 




XVI. 

IN WHICH THE TENDER- 
FOOT LEARNS A NEW 
TRICK. 



22> 




A 




XVI. 

OR those who have 
driven four-in-hand, 
this will have no mes- 
sage. But as four-in- 
hand literature seems 
to be somewhat lim- 
ited and my first lesson was somewhat 
drastic, I shall venture to tell you how 
it felt. 

Of coaching there are two kinds : 
Eastern coaching, with well-groomed 
full-fed horses, who are never worked 
harder than is good for them ; with sil- 
ver-plated harness, and coach with the 




latest springs and running gear, um- 
brella rack, horn, lunch larder, and 
what not; with footmen or postil- 
ions, according to the degree of style, 
to run to the horses' heads at the first 
hitch; with the gentleman driver in 
cream box coat and beribboned whip ; 
with everything down to the pole pin 
correct and immaculate. 

Then there is Western coaching, 
which is more properly termed staging, 
for which is used any vehicle that will 
hold together and whose wheels will 
turn round. This is pulled by half- 
broken shaggy horses which would 
kick any man who ventured near them 
with brush or currycomb, and which 
are sometimes made to travel until they 
drop in the road. The harness on such 
coaching trips is an assortment of sin- 
gle, double, leaders and wheelers sets, 



w 



ft 







ft<Pp\ 




mended with buckskin or wire and 
thrown on irrespective of fit. Lucky 
the cayuse who happens to be the 
right size for his harness. 

And the driver! No cream box 
coat for him — provident the one who 
owns a slicker and a coat of weather 
green (the same being the result of sun 
and rain on any given color). And the 
people in the stage hoist no white and 
red silk parasols. They are there be- 
cause they are " going somewhere." My 
multi-murderous cook taught me the 
distinction between "just travellin' " and 
" going somewhere." 

As for the roads — oh, those Rocky 
Mountain roads ! They make coaching 
quite a different thing from that on the 
smooth boulevards around New York. 
I have twice made seventy-five miles in 
twelve hours, by having four relays, but 



Vy<. 



- - '"V 



/ 





the average rate of travel is about 
twenty miles in eight hours. And the 
day when I first took the ribbons in my 
hands to guide four horses we were 
from nine in the morning till five at 
night going twelve miles. This was 
the way of it : 

Nimrod and I were on a hunting trip 
in the Canadian Rockies, and as the 
government map said there was a road, 
though not a good one, we decided to 
carry our belongings in a four-horse 
wagon, in which we could also ride if 
we liked, and to have saddle horses be- 
sides. 

Green, a man of the region, was the 
driver and cook, and we had as guest a 
famous bear hunter from the Sierra 
Nevadas. On the first two days out 
from the little mountain town where 
we started, we saw many tracks of 




black bear, which encouraged the hunt- 
ers to think that they might find a 
grizzly (which, by the way, they did 
not). 

The dust was thick and red, envelop- 
ing us all day long like some horrible 
insistent monster that had resolved it- 
self into atoms to choke, blind and 
strangle us. Nimrod looked like a clay 
man — hair, eyebrows, mustache, skin, 
and clothes were all one solid coating 
of red dust. We were all alike. Even 
the sugar, paper-wrapped in the bot- 
tom of a box, covered by other boxes, 
bags and a canvas, became adulterated 
almost past use. 

On the fourth day this changed, and 
we camped at the foot of a granite 
mountain. It made one think of the 
Glass Mountain of fable, with its 
smooth stretches of polished rock shin- 




ing in the sun. That a human being 
should dare to take a wagon over such 
a place seemed incredible. Yet there 
the road was, zigzagging up the rocky 
slope, while here and there the jagged 
outlines of blasted rock showed where 
the all-powerful dynamite had been 
used to make a resting place for strain- 
ing horses. 

That morning excitement surrounded 
our out-of-door breakfast table. We 
had had strange visitors during the 
night, while we slept. A mountain 
lion, the beautiful tan-coated vibrant- 
tailed puma, had nosed within ten feet 
of me and then, not liking the camp-fire 
glow and unalarmed by my inert form, 
had silently retreated. 

It made me feel creepy to see how 
easily that lithe-limbed powerful crea- 
ture might have had me for a midnight 





meal. But I was not trying to do 
him harm, and so he granted me the 
same tolerance. Then, too, not far 
away was a bear track, and the canned 
peaches were fewer than the night 
before. 

All of this caused Nimrod and the 
bear-hunter to saddle their horses early; 
and agreeing to meet us at night on the 
other side of the mountain, where the 
map showed a stream, they set out for a 
day's hunt. Nimrod's horse having 
gone slightly lame, I offered mine, a 
swift-footed intelligent dear, and agreed 
to ride in the wagon. 

It was the same old story. Virtue 
is somebody else's reward. I never 
had a worse day in the mountains. 
Green and I started blithely enough by 
nine, which had meant a 5:30 rising in 
the cold gray dawn. The horses had 



(vr 




been worked every day since the start, 
and were jaded. 

We went slowly along the only level 
road in our journey that day; but the 
load did not seem to be riding well, 
and at the beginning of the ascent 
Green got out to investigate. He said 
the spring was out of order. The 
wagon was what is known as a thor- 
ough-brace, which means that there are 
two large loopy steel bands on which 
the wagon box rests; the loops are 
filled in with countless strips of leather, 
forming a pad for the springs to play 
on. (The Century Dictionary will 
please not copy this definition.) The 
Deadwood stage coach was a thorough- 
brace, I believe. 

Another interesting out-of-date de- 
tail in the construction of this wagon 
was that the brake had no mechanical 




device for holding it in position when 
it was put on hard, and the driver had 
to rely upon his strength of limb to 
keep it in place. It seems that Green, 
in pounding these bits of leather in the 
spring, had badly crushed his left hand. 
He said nothing to me, and I did not no- 
tice that, contrary to custom, he was driv- 
ing with his right hand, which he usu- 
ally reserved for the whip and the brake. 
We crossed the shallow brook and 
started up the very steep and very rocky 
road, when everything happened at 
once. Two of the horses refused to 
pull and danced up and down in the 
one spot, a sickening thing for a horse 
to do. This meant the instant applica- 
tion of the brake. We had already be- 
gun to slip backward (the most un- 
comfortable sensation I know, barring 
actual pain). Nimrod's horse, tied on 




behind, gave a frightened snort and 
broke his rope. Green attempted to 
take the reins with his left hand. They 
dropped from his grasp, and I saw that 
his fingers were purple and black. 

" Grab the lines, can you ? " he said, 
as he seized the whip and put both feet 
on the brake. The leaders were cur- 
veting back on the wheelers in a way 
which meant imminent mix up, their 
legs over traces and behind whiffle- 
trees. On the right of us was solid 
rock up, on the left solid rock down, 
one hundred feet to the stream, and just 
ahead was the sharp turn the road made 
to a higher ledge in its zigzag up the 
mountain. 

I had always intended to learn to 
drive four-in-hand, but this first lesson 
left me no pleasure in the learning. 
There were no little triumphs of diffi- 



N 



/t 





culties mastered, no gentle surprises, no 
long, smooth, broad, and level stretches 
with plenty of room to pull a rein and 
see what would happen. I had to 
spring into the situation with know- 
ledge, as Minerva did into life, full 
grown. It was no kindergarten way of 
learning to drive four-in-hand. 

I grabbed the reins in both hands. 
There were yards of them, rods of them, 
miles of them — they belonged to a six 
or sixteen horse set. I do not know 
which. I sat on them. They writhed 
in my lap, wrapped around my feet, and 
around the gun against my knee, in a 
hopeless and dangerous muddle. Of 
course the reins were twisted. I did 
not know one from the other. I gave 
a desperate jerk which sent the leaders 
plunging to the right, where fortunately 
they brought up against the rock wall. 




Had they gone the other way nothing 
but our destiny could have saved us 
from going over the edge. Crack went 
the whip in the right place. 

" Slack the lines ! " Green cried, as 
he eased the brake. A lash of the whip 
for each wheeler, and we started for- 
ward, the horses disentangling them- 
selves from the harness as by a miracle, 
just as the rear wheels were hovering 
over the bluff. Green dropped the 
whip (his left hand was quite useless) 
and straightened out the reins for me. 

" Can you do it"? " he asked, grasping 
the whip, as the horses showed signs of 
stopping again. To attend to the brake 
was physically impossible. Green could 
not do it and drive with one hand. 

"Yes," I said, "but watch me" — an 
injunction scarcely necessary. 

If ever a woman put her whole mind 





i 



<> 






WE STARTED FORWARD, JUST AS THE REAR WHEELS WERE 
HOVERING OVER THE EDGE. 




to a thing, I did on that four-in-hand. 
There was no place for mistakes. There 
was no place for anything but the right 
thing, and do it I must or run the risk 
of breaking my very dusty, very brown, 
but none the less precious neck. 

A sharp turn in a steep road with 
rocks a foot high disputing the right 
of way with the wheels, a heavy load, 
horses that do not want to pull, and a 
green driver — that was the situation. 
If it does not appeal to you as one ot 
the horribles in life, try it once. 

"Run your leaders farther up the 
bank — left, left ! Getup,Milo! Frank, 
get out of that! Now sharp to the 
right. IVhoa! Steady I Left — left, I 
say! Milo, ivhoa ! Now to the right, 
quick! Let 'em on the bank more. 
Nellie, easy — whoa! Steady, George!" 
Crack went the whip on the leaders. 




" Hold your lines tighter. Pull that 
nigh leader. Get out of that, Frank! 
Now steady, boys ! Don't pull — there ! " 

Down went the brake ; we were safely 
round the turn, and all hands rested for 
a moment. 

Thus we worked all that morning, 
Green with the brake, the whip, and his 
tongue ; I with the lines, what strength 
I had and mother wit in lieu of ex- 
perience. 

There were stretches of two hundred 
feet of granite, smooth and polished 
as a floor, where the horses repeatedly 
slipped and tell, and where the wheels 
brought forth hollow mocking rumbles. 

There were sections where the rocky 
ledges succeeded one another in steps, 
and the animals had to pull the heavy 
wagon up rises from a foot to eighteen 
inches high by sheer strength — as easy 







JiV 



to drive up a flight of brownstone steps 
on Fitth Avenue. There were places 
between huge boulders where a* swerve 
of a foot to the right or to the left would 
have sent us crashing into the unyield- 
ing granite. 

When we got to the top there was 
no place to rest — only rock, rock every- 
where. No water, no food for the ex- 
hausted horses, nothing to do but to 
push on to the bottom — and such 
going! Have you ever felt the shud- 
dering of a wagon with brake hard on, 
as it poised in air the instant betore it 
dropped a foot or two to the next level, 
from hard rock to hard rock'? Have 
you ever tried to keep four horses 
away from under a wagon, and yet suf- 
ficiently near it not to precipitate the 
crash'? Have you ever at the same 
time tried to keep them from falling 



on the rocks ahead and from plunging 
over the bank as you turn a sharp 
curve on a steep down grade ? It you 
have, then you know the nature of my 
first lesson in four-in-hand driving. 

We got to the bottom at dusk. I 
was too tired to speak. Every muscle 
set up a separate complaint and I had 
had nothing to eat since morning, as 
we had expected to make camp by 
noon. The world seemed indeed a very 
drab place. We found the hunters 
careering around searching for us. They 
thought they had missed us — as they 
had done the bear. 

I have driven, and been driven, hun- 
dreds of miles since, but there never 
was a ride like those twelve, cruel, 
mocking, pitiless miles over Granite 
Mountain, when necessity taught me a 
very pretty trick, which, however, I 





have not yet been tempted to display 
at the Madison Square Garden in No- 
vember. 




o 



A 



E 
N 
D 
E 
R 

, S 

o 

T 



XVII. 

OTO MINE. 




XVII. 




T now behooves me to 
state that, between the 
events of the last chap- 
ter and this, Nimrod 
and I heard the hum, 
the wail, and the 
shriek that make the song of the 
Westinghouse brake before we found 
ourselves deposited at the flourishing 
mining camp of Red Ridge in the 
Arizona Rockies, nine thousand feet in 
the air. 

Did ever a tenderfoot escape from 
the mountains without at least having 
a try at making his or her fortune in 





a mine — gold one preferred ? We, 
of course, had the chance of our lives, 
and who knows what might have hap- 
pened if only the fat woman and the 
lean woman had not gotten jealous of 
each other, and thereby wrecked the 
company % 

The gold is, or is not, in the fastnesses 
of the earth as before, but where, oh, 
where, is the lean woman of lineage 
and the fat woman of money ? The 
lean woman had quality. She was the 
daughter of somebody who had done 
something, but, unlike Becky Sharp, she 
had not been successful in living 
richly in San Francisco on nothing a 
year. Nobody knows whose daughter 
the fat woman was, but in her very 
comfortable home in Kansas that had 
not mattered, and, besides, she had 
saved a few hundreds. 




K 
F 

g 

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These two women had husbands, 
who had entered into a mining scheme 
together. The man from Frisco was a 
good-looking, well-educated, jovial fel- 
low, with the purses of several rich 
friends to back him up, and with a 
great desire to replenish his purse with 
the yellow metal direct, rather than to 
acquire it by the sweat of his brow. 
He was many other things, but, to be 
brief, he was a promoter. The man 
from Kansas had the pride of the un- 
educated, and a little money, and was 
also not averse to getting rich fast. 

Nimrod, the third partner, likewise 
encumbered with a wife on the spot, 
desired to make his everlasting fortune, 
retire from the painting of pictures and 
the making of books, and grub in the 
field of science and live happily ever 
after. 



For two weeks we were all together 
at the only hotel at Cartersville, a ham- 
let of perhaps thirty souls. It took 
only two weeks to wreck the company. 
The mine was a mile and a half away, 
over a very up-and-down mountain 
road which on the first day the fat 
woman and I walked with our hus- 
bands, and which Mrs. Frisco and her 
husband had travelled in Mrs. Kansas' 
phaeton — the result of a little way Mrs. 
Frisco had of getting the best. 

Three days of this calm appropria- 
tion of her carriage while she walked 
ruffled Mrs. Kansas' temper. When 
she heard a rumour that Mrs. Frisco 
had stated disdainfully to the landlady 
that there could be no thought of rec- 
ognising Mrs. Kansas socially, but that 
she must be tolerated because of her 
money in the enterprise, her politeness 





grew frigid and the trouble began to 
brew. 

While perfectly willing to watch the 
logomachy when it should arrive, I had 
no wish to take part. I was willing to 
make money, but not to make enemies, 
so Nimrod and I removed ourselves as 
much as possible from the Cartersville 
Hotel, took long walks and rides over 
the glorious Chihuahua Mountains, 
poked around the abandoned mines, 
spied out the deer and mountain lion 
and the ubiquitous coyote and all the 
indigenous beasts and birds of the air 
thereof. We usually managed to ar- 
rive at the mine when the partners and 
their wives were elsewhere. 

The mine, our mine, was a long hori- 
zontal hole in the mountain, with a 
tiny leaf-choked stream trickling past 
the entrance, heavy timbers propping 





up the inert mass of dirt and stone just 
above our heads, piles of uninteresting 
rock dumped to one side, the " pay 
dirt." I had seen such things before, 
and they had said nothing to me. But 
this was our mine, our stream, our dump. 

McCaffrey, the foreman, put rubber 
boots on me in the little smithy which 
formed a part of the entrance of the 
tunnel, and thus equipped I entered 
the tunnel. The day shift, represented 
by two dancing lights far off in the 
blackness, was preparing to blast. 

I advanced uncertainly, my own can- 
dle blinding me. Water trickled from 
the roof and walls of this rock-bound 
passage seven feet high and four feet 
wide. A stream of it flowed by the 
tiny tram track. The hollow sound of 
the mallet on the crowbar forcing its 
the stubborn wall grew louder 



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as we approached, until we stood with 
the miners in a foot or so of water 
which showed yellow and shining in 
the flickering light of four candles. 
Then we went back to the smithy to 
wait the result of the blast. 

There was a horrid jarring booming 
sound. The miners listened intently. 
McCaffrey said, " One." Another ex- 
plosion in the tunnel followed — 
" Two." Another — " Three." Then a 
silence. "That's bad," said McCaff- 
rey, shaking his head. "An unex- 
ploded cap." 

" What do you mean ? " I asked. 

" There were four charges and should 
have been four explosions. It's liable 
to go off when we go in there." 

" Oh ! " I said. 

The miners waited a while for the 
fumes of the dynamite to be dissipated 





and kept me away from the tunnel 
mouth, saying: 

" If you ever get a dynamite head- 
ache you will never want to come near 
the mine again. And, besides, that un- 
exploded cap may do damage yet." 

I went back to the smithy to wait, for 
it was the last of October, and snow in 
the mountains at ten thousand feet is 
cold. I attempted to sit down on a keg 
behind the little sheet-iron stove, which 
was nearly red hot. 

" You better not sit down on that 
kaig," said one of the men calmly, 
without pausing in his work. 

"Why?" 

"Well, it's dirty, and, besides, it's 
nitro-glycerine." 

"Nitro-glycerine ! Why is it in here, 
and so close to the stove *? Won't it 
explode ? " and I checked a desire to 
retreat in disorder. 




YOU BETTER NOT SIT DOWN ON THAT KAIG 
IT'S NITROGLYCERINE." 




" No, 't'ain't no danger, if it don't get 
too hot and ain't jarred. You see, it 
won't go off if it's too cold, so we keep 
a little in here and kind o' watch it." 

The keg was within two feet of the 
stove. Suppose that a dog or some- 
thing were to knock it over ! But 
miners do not suppose. 

Just then a tremendous explosion in 
the tunnel seemed to make the whole 
earth vibrate. It was followed by a 
rattling and crashing of rocks, which 
told us that the last cap had gone off 
and had done good work. 

Half an hour later, when it was 
safe from dynamite fumes, I went back 
to our hole in the ground. Nimrod had 
left me, lured away by some fox tracks 
trailing up the mountain. The weird 
scene was too interesting for me to 
leave until the arrival of the fat and 
lean women (Mrs. Frisco had persuaded 





Mrs. Kansas to drive her over) caused 
me to remember that the parlour fire at 
the Cartersville Hotel must be very 
comfortable, and that it was a mile and 
a half of tiresome snow away. 

Evidently the wives of my husband's 
partners had disagreed on the way, 
for the air was electric as they greeted 
me, and to avoid another tete-a-tete 
they at once turned to accompany me 
out of the tunnel. I was the last. 

The scene was now properly set for 
a mining accident, so there was nothing 
for a self respecting tunnel to do but to 
act accordingly, which it did. Just as 
the fat woman and the lean woman 
passed into the open air, and I was 
nearly at the mouth of the tunnel, it 
caused its roof to cave in so close 
behind me that, had I not instinctively 
rushed out, some of the flying stones, 



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THE TUNNEL CAUSED ITS ROOF TO CAVE IN CLOSE BEHIND ME. 




timbers, and dirt must have knocked 
me to the ground. 

As it was, I landed sprawling in the 
snow outside, sweeping the lean woman 
down with me. It was very like a dime 
novel. Three lone women who, for 
purposes of intensification, may be 
called enemies, staring with white faces 
at a wall of dirt, and trying to realise 
that a minute before it had been a black 
hole. And at the other end of that 
hole now were two men horribly im- 
prisoned in a rock-walled tomb with- 
out air or food, perhaps dead. We 
could not tell how much of a cave-in 
it was. 

The lean woman rushed for Mrs. 
Kansas' horse and wagon and went to 
alarm the hamlet. I dashed up the hill 
a quarter of a mile to awaken the night 
shift, who were in their cabin sleeping. 




And the fat woman at a sate distance 
wrung- her hands and uttered exclama- 
tions of horror and ill judged advice to 
our departing forms. 

Between the fright, the altitude, and 
the hill I had no breath left to speak 
with as I pounded on the door of the 
miner's hut. Mountaineers sleep lightly 
and do not make toilets, so it was 
barely ten minutes from the time of the 
cave-in when three men were working 
at the tunnel's mouth with pickaxes 
and shovels. 

The tunnel had not meant to be ma- 
licious, but merely to do the proper 
thing (it had not even disturbed the 
nitro-glvcerine in the smithv). Not 
much earth had fallen, and in less than 
an hour we heard the shouts ot the 
imprisoned men; in two hours they 
crawled into the air unhurt, and soon 




\! 



were helping the others to shore up the 
treacherous entrance, so that such a 
stirring thing could not happen again. 

There is not much more to tell. I 
believe that the tunnel is still there, bor- 
ing its way into the heart of the moun- 
tain, where, perhaps, the lovely yellow 
gold is ; but we no longer refer to it 
as ours, and Nimrod still has to work 
for our daily jam. For the insolence ol 
Mrs. Frisco in leaving Mrs. Kansas 
stranded in the snow and obliging her 
to walk, home on the cave-in day de- 
veloped the brewing storm into such 
proportions that the next day their hus- 
bands did not speak as we gathered 
round the morning coffee. And the 
Kansases moved away into one of the 
other five houses in Cartersville. Mr. 
Kansas was not "going to see his wife 
insulted by an upstart — not he: he'd 



soon show them," and he did so effec- 
tively that the Red Ridge Mining Com- 
pany was soon no more. We docketed 
our golden dreams ' unusable,' stowed 
them away, and returned with tranquil 
minds, if lighter purse, to milder and 
slower ways of getting rich. 



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'355, 



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XVIII. 

THE LAST WORD. 

2S 



1357 



XVIII. 




OW this is the end. 
It is three years since 
I first became a wo- 
man-who-goes-hunting- 
with-her-husband. I 
have lived on jerked 
deer and alkali water, and bathed in 
dark-eyed pools, nestling among vast 
pines where none but the four footed 
had been before. I have been sung 
asleep a hundred times by the coyotes' 
evening lullaby, have felt the spell of 
their wild nightly cry, long and mourn- 
ful, coming just as the darkness has 
fully come, lasting but a few seconds, 



and then heard no more till the night 
gives place to the fresh sheet of dawn. 
I have pored in the morning over the 
big round footprints of a mountain lion 
where he had sneaked in hours of dark- 
ness, past my saddle pillowed head. I 
have hunted much, and killed a little, 
the wary, the beautiful, the fleet-footed 
big game. I have driven a four-in-hand 
over corduroy roads and ridden horse- 
back over the pathless vasty wilds of 
the continent's backbone. 

I have been nearly frozen eleven 
thousand feet in air in blinding snow, 
I have baked on the Dakota plains 
with the thermometer at 116 degrees, 
and I have met characters as diverse as 
the climate. I know what it means to 
be a miner and a cowboy, and have 
risked my life when need be, but, best 
of all, I have felt the charm of the 





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J7 •; 



'09 




glorious freedom, the quick rushing 
blood, the bounding motion, of the 
wild life, the joy of the living and of 
the doing, of the mountain and the 
plain ; I have learned to know and feel 
some, at least, of the secrets of the Wild 
Ones. In short, though I am still a 
woman and may be tender, I am a 
Woman Tenderfoot no longer. 




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